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[As of July this year, Rio Tinto alone has shipped 4 billion tons of iron ore to China, which can produce enough steel to build 23,000 Bird's Nest stadiums.]

Although August is winter in the southern hemisphere, the daytime temperature still exceeds 30°C deep in the mining area in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

The mining area is a two-hour flight north from Perth, the capital of Western Australia. Looking down from the plane, the entire mining area is covered in reddish brown, with occasional vegetation.

This is the world's largest iron ore producing area, with a total area of ​​500,000 square kilometers. Its iron ore reserves account for about 28% of the world's total, of which 70% is high-grade hematite with an iron content of more than 60%.

Over the past 20 years, with the explosive growth of China's steel industry, a large amount of high-quality iron ore has been shipped from here across the ocean to China, which has also led to the growth of two major mining giants.

"I have been with Rio Tinto for 25 years. In the early 2000s, our iron ore production was around 70 million tons per year, but now that number has grown to more than 330 million tons," recalled Simon Trott, CEO of Rio Tinto's iron ore business, the world's largest iron ore producer. "Over the years, our assets in the Pilbara region have grown, as have those of our competitors. This is probably the largest industrial asset expansion I have ever seen, or even in the past few hundred years."