I don’t know what kind of a country China is. It’s so strange that China, as a heavy buyer of mineral ores, soybeans, crude oils, and everything, is not in a position to set prices for those things. I read news about Chinese importers being forced to accept ridiculous price hikes charged by foreign raw material suppliers. Though I knew neither how the pricing mechanism worked on a global level nor how those price markups would affect China, it didn’t take an economist to guess that someone – most likely the average Chinese consumers – would be the last one to whom all price increases would be passed on.