China Steel Mills Drop as Credit Squeeze, Ore Panic Grips

Chinese steel companies, the world’s largest, helped propel Asian producers to a seven-month low this week as concern builds that some mills face financial difficulty amid a government credit squeeze.

“They are having trouble accessing finance,” Yunde Li, chairman of Ishine, a unit of China Zhongsheng Resources Holdings Ltd., which processes iron ore in Shandong, said yesterday in an interview in Perth. Some of Ishine’s steel mill customers cannot make their payments to his company, Li said through a translator, declining to name the companies.