There is overwhelming evidence that China does manipulate commodity markets including graphite and part of that involves 'adjusting' prices to drive out competition in order to maintain a monopoly position. The evidence so far suggests that they are increasing graphite production as competitors come on line in order to drive them out of business. BHP and RIO are doing the same thing by increasing iron ore volume and driving prices down to eliminate Chinese iron ore competition.
You may be interested in the upcoming 4th Graphite & Graphine Conference, Berlin Germany December 2014, Following is an excerpt from the TRU Group Inc Graphite Paper that has been produced for that conference.
The graphite industry, like others in China such as rare earths and magnesium, are manipulated by the central and state governments. Prices are largely an issue of policy pressure and control. Also Chinese companies do not view profits as we do in the West. There are abundant resources of graphite, rare earth elements and magnesium ores available globally which are beginning to be brought into production as we belatedly realize that China - and now also Russia - are unreliable source for these important high-tech-industry materials. However, there are few underlying market forces to hold natural graphite prices at this level and the medium trend in the outlook through 2015 is negative for most graphite product prices - including prices for (coated) natural spherical flake graphite. Longer term 2020 prices will trend moderately lower and stabilize as a few new high-tech western companies begin production. These lower graphite price levels are heading to the new norm and the price premium on "battery grade" over technical grade (flake-size differentials) is narrowing as predicted.
http://trugroup.com/graphite-graphene-conference.shtml
