Metals Place reported that a senior mining executive told Business Day that the China Iron & Steel Association had so far repeated all the mistakes of last year and added a few more in this year's iron ore dealings.

The mistakes included lobbing bombastic threats without having any strategy for following through.

As per report, nearly two months ago, CISA told Vale, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton that it would be taking a harder line and would not accept anything less than a discount "China price" compared with Japan and other countries.

CISA also said it would repeat last year's disastrous experiment of having Baosteel officials leading the talks while consulting CISA officials in the same room.

A senior mining executive said “CISA is behaving every bit as irrationally as they did last time around. There is no way that anybody is going to want to engage with them."

The report also quoted Mr Hu Kai, an analyst with Shanghai consultancy Umetal.com, predicting that CISA might get its "China price" after all, but it would be higher than everybody else's. He said “Japan and Europe stick to contracts and China imports all from the spot market. That means China will pay a different price to every shipment.”

Mr Hu said no iron ore negotiations were taking place with China. He said the Stern Hu case had had "a negative impact" and had helped the resolve of the mining companies against heavy handed tactics by the Chinese Government and CISA. He said “This has resulted in resistance, or even an unwillingness to talk.”

He said Chinese steel mills had not helped their cause by walking away from iron ore contracts when prices tanked after the 2008 financial crisis. He said “Nobody talks now … contracts seem to have no binding power any more.”

(Sourced from Metals Place)