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China and Japan Covet the Same Rare-Earth Metals
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Australian: "Japan's increasingly frantic efforts to lead the world in green technology have put it on a collision course with the ambitions of China and dragged both government and industry into the murky realm of large-scale mineral smuggling."
At least it's breeding competition to do something good for once. This is the kind of stuff governments should be doing.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
A rare-earth metal so rare that it doesn't even have a name without RTFA.
If only Japan coveted lead, they could come to some arrangement.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
are only rare on Earth. Time to start asteroid mining.
Like buying gold in WoW?
Rare-earths aren't only in China. China is simply making rare-earths available cheaper than it would be for countries to mine them themselves.
News flash: Japan imports nearly everything.
All currency is backed by trust, even gold/oil. Gold has little intrinsic worth and oil's intrinsic value is that is can be burnt to do usefull work, with any currency you are simply trusting that your fellow man will see it as a token that can be swapped for something with intrinsic value such as food, shelter, oil, etc. China is the modern equivalent of the Medici family, they may well end up printing the default currency one day but that will be because the huge government deficits around the globe are largely funded by China's massive trade surplus. They have not yet threatened to derail the gravy train but Hu has stated several times that he will only continue to fund deficits in the west while it's "economically sustainable" to do so.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
it's time to start checking under your beds for communists kids.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Lithium (presumably for lithium-ion electric car batteries) is not a rare-earth metal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element
Which element(s) are we fussing about? Why are they useful for green tech?
Lanthanum: very useful for green tech. Hydrogen fuel cell-related.
Hydrogen sponge alloys can contain lanthanum. These alloys are capable of storing up to 400 times their own volume of hydrogen gas in a reversible adsorption process. Heat energy is released
Cerium: maybe useful for green tech. Maybe motor magnets.
Cerium is used in alloys that are used to make permanent magnets.
Praseodymium: maybe marginally useful for green tech. Lightweight cars.
As an alloying agent with magnesium to create high-strength metals that are used in aircraft engines
Neodymium: very useful for green tech. Strong motor magnets.
Neodymium magnets are the strongest permanent magnets known.
Promethium: probably not useful for green tech.
Light sources.
Samarium: probably not useful for green tech.
Headphone magnets.
Alloys.
Europium: probably not useful for green tech.
Red color in CRTs.
Gadolinium: probably not useful for green tech.
Garnets.
CDs.
MRIs.
Terbium: marginally useful for green tech.
Solid state devices.
Alloys that respond strongly to a magnetic field. Sensor, actuator applications.
"Green" phosphors. Ha.
Dysprosium: very useful for green tech. Strong motor magnets.
* Neodymium-iron-boron magnets can have up to 6% of the neodymium substituted with dysprosium[15] to raise the coercivity for demanding applications such as drive motors for hybrid electric vehicles.
* This substitution would require up to 100 grams of dysprosium per hybrid car produced.
* Based on Toyota's projected 2 million units per year, the use of dysprosium in applications such as this would quickly exhaust the available supply of the metal. The dysprosium substitution may also be useful in other applications, as it improves the corrosion resistance of the magnets
* Currently, most dysprosium is being obtained from the ion-adsorption clay ores of southern China.
Holium: maybe useful for green tech.
Very strong magnets.
Cubic zirconia.
Lasers.
Erbium: useful for green tech, but probably not in the article's context, which was automotive.
Nuclear control rods.
Cubic zirconia.
Lasers.
Cryocoolers.
Thulium: scarce; probably not useful for green tech.
Superconductors.
Microwave equipment.
X-ray devices, in a nuclear reactor.
Ytterbium: useful for green tech, but probably not in the article's context, which was automotive.
Convert infrared light to electricity in solar cells.
X-ray source. Steel dopant.
Optics, lasers.
Lutetium: scarce; useful for green tech, but probably not in the article's context, which was automotive.
Catalyst in process of making OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes).
It turns out China (and to some extend Australia) are rich in these ores that contain lanthanum, neodymium, terbium, and dysprosium:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastnasite
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monazite
Other ores:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenotime
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fergusonite
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadolinite
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euxenite
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycrase
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blomstrandine
The Australian News article is probably worrying over China controlling bastnasite and monazite, which notably have neodymium and dysprosium, which are used for magnets, which go in motors, which go in electric cars, which is a green tech. A car is pictured in the article.
Working the lanthanum angle wrt fuel cells seems less likely.
Also, an AC on /. that read Wikipedia is not a reliable source :)
What really stood out to me in TFA:
there are now a lot of [green] technologies that can't work without rare earths, and China is currently in effective control of the global supply.
So I am thinking to myself: 1) The U.S. is amassing trillions and debt, much of it held by the Chinese, and 2) The Chinese own the key elements required by certain Green technology - which the U.S. government is pushing toward.
Did I just catch a glimpse of the slow arc of the decline of the U.S.? Is the U.S. grabbing its own ankles, or what!?
Mine is Good
From what I understand from the article, China only holds 95% of the supply because they are able to provide the metals for cheaper. If these Chinese companies took advantage of their "monopoly position" by raising prices significantly, then other countries/companies would simply mine their own rare earth metals. Right now, there's simply no economic incentive to increase the mining capacity.
[citation needed]
Interestingly enough, there is a major chinese financial stake in both major Aussie rare earths companies trying to develop Australian located deposits. ARU and LYC respectively. In LYC's case its a controlling interest. Haven't looked in depth into ARU as I don't hold.
The issue has seemed to be too far beneath the radar for the govt to get involved unlike say OzMinerals (where the federal govt moved to restrict how much stake the incoming Chinese companies were allowed to buy and specifically excluded their biggest resource, Prominent Hills, which is gold + copper).
disclaimer: I hold LYC, aussie citizen, ethnically chinese ;)
Unless you're implying China is going to assassinate foreign industrialists, you're apparently confused. Most of the known reserves of rare earth metals aren't in China - the problem, for Japan, is that China has negotiated exclusive trading rights with several developing countries over their stocks of rare earth metals. So the local governments may even be in on this 'black market' - the problem is that if they openly sell directly to Japanese companies, China will bring suit against them in the WTO.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
If the parent actually said something of doubtable factual accuracy, then it would be at least a little appropriate.
If someone disagrees, then it's doubtable. As to whether it's factual:
Are you expecting everyone to footnote their opinions with "1. My Brain. A couple minutes ago."?
At least on Wikipedia, you're not supposed to post original research, including original syntheses. You can post opinions if you cite a reliable source stating that someone else holds that opinion.
But of course, Slashdot is not Wikipedia. Is this what you were trying to get at?
Is it really flamebait when the post is so absurd that no one can take it as anything other than a joke?
Well, then good luck borrowing money from anybody ever again, after a default on that scale.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
BACKGROUND: From 1930's until 1945 Imperial Japan and Nazi-Germany were engaged in a militaristic expansion of their Lebensraum (lit. german expression meaning "living space for their own ethnicity") while attempting to grab foreign countries' natural resources to feed their industries (including the important military-industrial complex). This was in fact a "modern" replay of age-old imperialism and something that the most recent dominant empires, such as Britain, Russia and China had been at until then.
After WWII, (Soviet) Russia emerged as the greatest beneficiary in terms of imperial territory, while the recently democratized Britain had to begin surrendering the sovereignty of most of their empire's territory back to their native peoples.
Meanwhile the secretive and reclusive Chinese empire of Middle Kingdom, with its age-old imperial view of its neighbouring countries (of non-Chinese and non-sinicized peoples) as mere vassal states, was being taken over by Mao's communist dictatorship which uniquely combined the Marxist doctrines (like internationalism) with its own Han-Chinese chauvism (racial and cultural superiority akin to Nazi ideology).
Thus after the 1949 takeover of China by Mao the Soviet-backed "people's liberation" communist army was quickly sent to "liberate" and annex the vast territories of China's historical western neighbours, Mongols, Tibetans and Uighurs. Manchus in the north had at that point mostly been demographically assimilated already, despite Manchuria's widely recognized declaration of independence in 1932.
The sparsely populated and non-Chinese Central-Asian nations of Tibetans, Mongols and Uighurs, however, were soon put under systematic colonial exploitation, including the sinister policy of settling massive numbers of uprooted Chinese settlers into the occupied territories in order to consolidate de facto Chinese imperial rule there for eternity.
TODAY: The territories of Tibetans, turkic Uighurs and (South) Mongols (as Northern Mongolia regained its independence from Soviet Union in 1991) have been integrated into the centrally-planned industrial system of the (formerly communist) nazional-socialist Chinese empire by the virtue of their massive exploitable natural resources such as oil, gas, water and vast deposits of precious and industrial minerals of all kinds. Native people are still an annoyance to be dealt with, mainly through policies of Han-chauvinist propaganda and systematic sinicization enforced through strict military control.
Here is one example article detailing China's ongoing industrial exploitation of the occupied territories. While this particular article doesn't refer to rare earth metals specifically, both South Mongolia and Tibet are being mined for them.
China mines Tibet's rich resources
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Aside from the moral issue of literally stealing the life's savings of millions of chinese peasants?
No, this money comes from the Chinese government not Chinese citizens. Sure at one point, Chinese peasants might have had some of this money, but it isn't theirs any more.
Having said that, defaulting on hundreds of billions or trillions of debt ultimately won't help the US's reputation or financial condition. It'd just be another nail in the coffin. Chinese could always sell its debt to another party (like Japan or the UK) in order to damage the US further. Will the US continue its default when the UK owns the debt? That would also generate massive inflation in the US dollar since a considerable portion of dollar-valued assets lost most or all of their value. And I'm ignoring the WTO-style retaliations. While the US can ignore them, seizure of assets, tariffs, trade embargoes, etc are going to hurt the US.
Finally, I'm not that concerned about the Chinese government strategy. They aren't that good. A near monopoly on rare earths, for example, only makes sense if a) you have the power to enforce the monopoly and b) rare earths become important enough strategically to warrant the effort of creating the monopoly. My view is that China's current inability to enforce these contracts is only the tip of the iceberg. We still have yet to consider whether the contracts have been made in good faith. For example, if a contract has been made with a corrupt government (eg, Burma), then there's a good chance that the contract isn't enforceable without considerably more military power than China will have for decades.
Similarly, China's purchase of massive amounts of US debt just doesn't make that much sense. Even if one is correct in the assumption that the US will pay off its debts, it's still pretty obvious that the US government is engaging in near-suicidal levels of spending and entitlement. My view is that China does so only to support its export industries. I believe that to be a inferior strategy in the long run as well since they lose the benefit of imports from even cheaper places.
My view is that the US could, if it were to keep to sensible levels of government spending, maintain trade deficits indefinitely. There is tremendous wealth creation going on in the US (even during recessions). In good years, only part of this wealth is used to buy imported goods and services. China, by eschewing the benefits of imports, is weakening its economy and depriving its citizens of wealth.
I didn't mean it was completely useless, what I was trying to say is that you can't eat it. I agree Issac Newton's "gold standard" was a brilliant step forward in economics, he understood that gold was usefull as a token because it's hard to come by and because everyone has trust in the idea that it will always be hard to come by and can be swapped for food, etc. However it's value collapses when it occasionally becomes easier to obtain, take a look at what occured across Europe when Spain doubled the available gold supply in a very short space of time by looting the Myan empire. All that gold didn't make Europe twice as rich, it simply made gold half as valuable basically wiping out 50% of peoples existing savings.
With so called "fait currency" governments can have absolute control over the supply and thus control infalation (something they can't do with gold, silver, etc), the down side is governments sometimes collapse, when that happens the currency becomes fancy toilet paper (ie: it wipes out 100% of peoples savings, eg:Zimbabwe). The smart thing to do is treat currency itself as a kind of commodity and turn the fluctuating value of it's various forms into personal profit, not that I know how to do that but those who do are extremely wealthy.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Gold has little intrinsic worth
There is no such thing as intrinsic worth, at all, for anything, including food. There are only desirable properties, and the desire for those properties changes on a second by second basis for each individual and their circumstance. If I own a dozen palaces, then the "intrinsic value" of an additional hovel for shelter is close to zero for me.
Gold is scarce; it is difficult to counterfeit and difficult to mine.
Gold doesn't oxidize or otherwise degrade.
Gold is easily divisible.
Gold is easily moved and hidden.
Gold is shiny and pleasing in jewelry.
Gold has a high price per unit weight.
Gold is easily exchanged for other currencies.
Gold has a 3,000 year history as a currency in it's own right.
Deleted
My sister's work has offices in China. It's become clear to them (and the Chinese will tell you this to your face, if you ask) that China's REAL motivation with all this new "capitalism" is in sucking all the wealth out of the West.
Which goes right along with what you said. (Interesting post, BTW.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?