CORPORATE NEWS: "China Steps Up Drive to Shrink Its Role as a Top Global Steelmaker," by Chuin-Wei Ya and Andrew Batson, Wall Street Journal< 4 December 2009.

China is hot to cut production capacity in its overbuilt (overly fractured) steel industry, so it's got big plans to close all sort of facilities over the next three years. Stunning, to think of it. Used to be that making steel was the great sign of making it as an industrial power (was even for America in my childhood), but now "making it" is seen as moving beyond such crude production to higher-earnings and cleaner industries. And, as for China, it makes no sense, energy wise or resource wise, to continue trying to produce half the world's steel.