Down Under Gets Closer To The Rest Of The World

While it often seems that Australia is a long way from everywhere else, Down Under’s geographic location is finally paying some significant dividends due to its relative proximity to the industrial areas of south China. Blessed with a continent-wide abundance of raw materials that its own limited population has no immediate use for, Australia now has a huge and eager market waiting at the end of a relatively short sea hop.
This represents a significant cost advantage for the Australian mining industry over that of other, more distant countries. Efficient sea transport also allows buyers to avoid the clogged and under-developed rail networks of continental Asia.

These factors naturally lead to tremendous expansion and modernization of the local mining industry. An additional plus for Australia is that it is a safe haven for nervous Chinese investors, who increasingly park their capital in projects necessary to their own industrial plans but distant from areas of increasing social turmoil on the Asiatic mainland.