A $10 billion iron-ore mine that has taken more than eight years to develop near this remote Australian port is a glaring example of how much has gone wrong with China's decadelong push to buy up raw materials around the world. As the WSJ's Wayne Arnold reports:

Citic Pacific's Sino Iron mine cost roughly four times its initial budget, and analysts who track the project say it likely will lose hundreds of millions of dollars in 2014, its first full year of production. Citic Pacific, a Hong Kong-listed subsidiary of Chinese state-owned behemoth Citic Group, and its contractors made a series of blunders, from thinking...