Babjak1 has pointed out a few times that KWG dropped China from their patent application. 

http://kwgresources.com/marten-falls-kwg-to-propose-ring-of-fire-mining-partnership-meet-with-china-railway-fsdi/

From Apr 2017....

KWG subsidiary Muketi Metallurgical LP is prosecuting two chromite-refining patent applications in Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, and USA. The filings have been receipted in each of those jurisdictions.

Fast forward to Dec 2017....

http://kwgresources.com/kwg-allowed-canadian-patent-for-production-of-chromium-iron-alloys-directly-from-chromite-ore/

KWG subsidiary Muketi Metallurgical LP is prosecuting two chromite-refining patent applications in Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, and USA. The national phase filings are under review in each of those jurisdictions.

Kaboom no China.

Add to this the silencing of KWG so they may not produce any more Mining Minutes and the need to remove the videos from the web in Jan 2018.

One has to wonder why KWG dropped their patent application in China....the largest producer of stainless steel in the world?  Who instigated and why were they silenced all of a sudden after years of,in some cases, high profile Mining Minute releases?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-metals-ferrochrome-prices/weak-demand-from-china-stainless-steel-mills-hits-ferrochrome-prices-idUSKBN19J1G7

"China last year accounted for nearly 25 million tonnes or about 54 percent of global stainless steel production."

This seems like a very stupid move by KWG to allow China free reign over their patent unless they have a very good economic reason?  What would the reason be?

1 China gets free use of the patent in exchange for something very big.  Free rail, free KWG mine, guaranteed offtake agreement for a certain period of time?

2 China using the direct reduction patent allows them to be the lowest cost producer in the world or at least offsets the cost of shipping raw chromite to china? 

3 Allows China/KWG team to compete with Noront in the production of stainless steel?  To date Noront plans to use electric arc furnaces.

China seems to have plans to increase their supply of LNG to reduce their need to import......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_in_China

"To lessen dependence on LNG, China has built pipelines to import natural gas from Myanmar and Central Asia. In 2014, China closed a deal with Russia to import large volumes of gas from eastern Russia, starting in 2018."

The power of this move seems to give KWG much more leverage in negotiating with Noront if a merger or aquisition is in the works now or in the future?

I wonder what 1.5c KWG has planned?  Frank has been doing this for a long time and I expect he wants to be paid for all his work surviving the gobbling of the ring assets by Cliffs and then Noront.

Ringer