China steel mills start taking the high road

THESE are not the best of times to be one of China's massive, state-owned steel mills. The domestic economy is slowing, competition is increasing, and there is widespread disgust and impatience with the smog pouring out of their stacks. In short, their lucrative business model for the past three decades is slowly dying. So what is a manager of a Chinese steel mill to do?

One surprisingly popular option is to bid China goodbye. In November, Hebei Iron & Steel Co Ltd, a provincial-owned company and China's largest steelmaker by production, announced that it was moving five million tonnes of its annual production - roughly 11 per cent of the 45 million tonnes of steel that it makes every…