US miner Cliffs Natural Resources has escalated its critique of Australian iron ore miners, accusing them of supplying China with the materials to launch its territorial advances into the South China Sea. 
In an emotive attack on exporters such as Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, Cliffs chairman and chief executive, Lourenco Goncalves, said the miners were supplying China "to become an enemy".
"I hope the Australians will continue to question themselves why one or two companies are giving their finite resource away to the Chinese while the Chinese builds into a military powerhouse in the South China Sea," he said to analysts on Friday.
"I believe that China is a disaster. I believe that China will bring Australia down.
"Australia is a member of the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement), so it is a friend, at the same time that they supply China to become an enemy. So [they've] got to pick a side.
"I think that Australia will only believe China is destroying Australia when they build an artificial island on the Great Barrier Reef that they can see from the shore. So it is a matter of a myopic approach to world geopolitics and economics."
Cleveland-based Cliffs has a marginal iron ore export business in WA and several iron ore and coal assets in North America, and Mr Goncalves has several times over the past year attacked the big miners for continuing to grow iron ore exports into a weak market.
Mr Goncalves vowed last year Cliffs would pull out of Australia in about five years when its WA iron ore asset reaches the end of its working life, and he declared that selling iron ore from US mines into the US steel sector was a better plan that continuing to supply China as its economy slowed.
Mr Goncalves joined with Fortescue chairman Andrew Forrest last year in unsuccessfully calling for a government inquiry into iron ore. Then-prime minister Tony Abbott initially indicated support for such an inquiry, before abandoning the idea.
Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Brendan Pearson dismissed Mr Goncalves's comments. "These claims are nonsensical and incoherent. Fortunately, there is not the slightest prospect of his advice being taken seriously," he said.
There was no immediate comment from Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop's office.