curbed the activities of domestic miners since October, especially by smaller operators, in order to forestall the occurrence of any untoward contingencies
this is probably a reference to a very bad mining accident at a coal mine in China that caused China to shut down coal mines summer before last-which is why China was heavily importing coal at that time-which resulted in the highest shipping prices in some time August 2011- ca 14000/day for Panamax at that time-which was barely above breakeven because shipping companies had been operating at a loss(ca 12-13k/day for a Panamax) just to keep ships running instead of levying huge impairment costs on idle ships.
The 30% tax on exports of Australian iron ore should have a very positive impact on iron prices for iron producers like CWRN as it completely eliminates Australias home court advantage in selling to relative neighbor China,as Australian miners have said-see previous article I posted.