And the second is the huge export boosts from China in iron and steel. (alleged in the article to be below cost but there wasn't really any support for that argument.)
Any insights on why companies doing ship breaking wouldn't invest at least some of the returns into their own facilities? I could understand if it was a sort of "one and done" thing where you never expected to break a second ship, but since they suggest there is 30 years of experience here, what is the process whereby people don't figure out ways to do it better/more efficiently/safer? I would expect that eventually this would be an ideal robotics sort of application (assuming you are ok with a mobile robot carrying around a plasma torch :-)
As for China, their behavior has been consistent over the last 50 years at least, which is that acquiring foreign currency reserves are more important than profits. They still import a lot of "stuff" so that is going to be critical to economic growth. There is a long tradition of exporting natural resources to fund those reserves, whether it is Russian's oil, or South Africa's mineral wealth. But if they are being forced to cut prices to keep those reserves flowing, that's an interesting data point on their economic health.