In What is Chinalco?s role in the mining love triangle?, we said that

Traditionally, the annual price for iron ore is determined by chivalrous negotiation between the producers (e.g. BHP, Rio, CVRD) and customers (Chinese, Japanese and Korean steel mills). Last year, BHP had been toying and pushing with the idea of turning iron ore price determination towards the more conventional free market model. Of course, that angered China as it is in their interest to contain iron ore prices. We guess the Chinese must still be smarting from BHP?s attempted spat. The recent move by Chinalco could just be the first round of a payback.

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… They will be careful not to turn this into a political drama. That explains why they are, up till now, taking the softly softly approach.

It will be interesting to watch what the Chinese will do for their next step.

Guess what the next step of the Chinese is? They blacklisted Rio and BHP in their own daily spot market. See this news article: China locks out BHP and Rio ore.