 | | TOKYO -- After three years of punishing Australia for proposing an international probe into the roots of COVID-19, China seems to be softening its stance. Beijing has dropped duties on Australian barley and resumed cabinet-level meetings.
Yet, slowly but surely, Beijing is trying to cut dependence on Australian iron ore. Relying on a Quad member for 69% of its imports was becoming too much.
Last week, mining giant Rio Tinto and a consortium of Chinese state-owned enterprises announced that they had agreed with the government of Guinea to build a transnational railway to carry iron ore from the west African nation's interior to the coast.
Rather than cut through nearby Liberia or Sierra Leone, the plan is to travel through China-friendly Guinea. This means snaking through mountainous terrain over bridges and tunnels to a deep-sea port that will also be built.
Although the potential of the Simandou mountain range -- home to the world's largest reserve of undeveloped high-grade, low-impurity iron ore -- has been known for years, the daunting cost was always the stumbling block. The green light for the project may be a hint that Chinese President Xi Jinping has concluded that the price of geopolitics cannot be measured in simple return-on-investment calculations.
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