
China to Lift Ban of 400,000 DWT 'Valemax' Mega-Ships - protomyth
http://gcaptain.com/china-to-lift-ban-of-400000-dwt-valemax-mega-ships/
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t0mas88
This reads like a warning against doing too much business in China? They
basically blackmailed a Brazilian company into setting up a joint venture with
a local Chinese shipping / ore company by forbidding their ships to enter
Chinese ports?

~~~
douche
That's basically the way foreign trade with China has always worked,
particularly sea-trade. The Portuguese were consigned to stay on Macau, and
trade via a guild of registered Chinese merchants in Canton, the Cohong. Later
the English and others got in on the deal. And then, unhappy with the
restrictions of the system, and crack-downs on smuggling opium, from 1840 to
1914 damn near every western merchant power engaged in trade wars and gunboat
diplomacy to wrest free-trade agreements and other concessions.

~~~
rebootthesystem
Is there a good book that covers the history of trade with China? This sounds
interesting.

~~~
douche
Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China is fairly decent, although it is
not light-weight.

[http://www.amazon.com/Search-Modern-China-Jonathan-
Spence/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Search-Modern-China-Jonathan-
Spence/dp/0393307808/)

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protomyth
"Signs of a thaw began appearing last September after Vale signed a deal to
sell and lease back ships from China Ocean Shipping Co (COSCO), the country’s
largest shipping conglomerate."

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mgirdley
Imagine the mafia started a country and then a hundred years later tried to
clean up their image a little.

That's how I think of business and government there.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
What do you think of Rockefeller and other early US industrialists?

~~~
narrator
...and Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" testimony.

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Animats
This issue has been building for a while. See this 2011 article.[1] Shipowners
in China were unhappy with Vale, which is an iron ore producer, using their
own ships.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-23/china-
shun...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-23/china-shunning-
biggest-ore-ships-shows-2-3-billion-vale-mistake-freight)

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sxcurry
This is a really interesting site for shipping news. Here's a video about the
largest floating structure in the world being built:
[http://gcaptain.com/prelude-flng-taking-shape-birds-eye-
view...](http://gcaptain.com/prelude-flng-taking-shape-birds-eye-view-of-
largest-floating-structure-ever-built/)

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hga
In some respects, not all that large; from the Wikipedia page
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valemax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valemax)):
" _Once all 35 Valemax ships are in service and if each ship does four round
trips per year, they will be capable of carrying about 15% of the annual iron
ore exports from Brazil to all destinations._ "

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jlarocco
Ignoring the political issues, living in a landlocked state, it always boggles
my mind reading about and seeing pictures of these huge ships. I'm not sure
I've ever seen a man made object even coming close to the size of these ships.

~~~
vacri
Skyscrapers? Sporting stadiums? Megamalls? You could also probably consider
large sections of the road network to be single objects.

~~~
jlarocco
From what I've heard, some of the larger cargo ships and oil tankers are big
enough to carry the Empire State Building. And the Empire State Building is a
lot bigger than any building I can think of in Colorado.

And besides, buildings just sit there. These big ships are moving machines
that travel around the world. Much more impressive, IMO.

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rdlecler1
China keeps overplaying its hand. How many case studies do you need before you
realize that as a non-Chinese company you are not allowed to win. This can't
end well for China.

