Chinese steel traders are short on good news these days. Prices for steel are falling, demand is poor, loans are hard to come by, and no relief is in sight.

“There is just no demand,” says one trader in the town of Tangshan. “It’s much worse than [the last downturn] in 2008. In 2008 at least you had buyers talking to you. Not any more.”

The collapse of China’s steel market has reverberated around the world: benchmark prices for iron ore, a key steelmaking ingredient, have dropped to three-year lows of $89 a tonne, down 24 per cent in the past month alone. China accounts for about 60 per cent of global imports of iron ore, a market worth more than $100bn annually worldwide and one that is essential for the profits of global mining houses such as BHP Billiton, Rio Tintoand Valeof Brazil.