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China Considering Cuts In Rare-Earth Metal Exports
SillySnake sends in a report from the Telegraph on draft plans in China to restrict exports of rare earths. "Beijing is drawing up plans to prohibit or restrict exports of rare earth metals that are produced only in China and play a vital role in cutting edge technology, from hybrid cars and catalytic converters, to superconductors, and precision-guided weapons. A draft report by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium. Other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year, far below global needs."
Just what the world economy needs. A single-country "cartel" that will cause prices to greatly rise. This should be interesting to watch.
I guess rare-earth metals are the new "oil".
Some key points you may have missed from the article:
Mr Stephens said China had put global competitors out of business in the early 1990s by flooding the market, leading to the closure of the biggest US rare earth mine at Mountain Pass in California - now being revived by Molycorp Minerals.
So, if this goes through, we merely open the mine in California. I'll feel better about paying a higher price for something if it is created under tighter environmental regulations than what they have in China. Cheap labor and lack of an EPA and potential corrupted officials? Of course they can undercut California!
Secondly a rare metals dealer in Australia said
This isn't about the China holding the world to ransom. They are saying we need these resources to develop our own economy and achieve energy efficiency, so go find your own supplies.
So your analogy is lacking in many ways. We can refine the metals here and China needs them for their own growing demand.
My work here is dung.
Issue with that is that I think China, unlike Iraq, Iran and Saudi could stand up for themselves.
Don't forget they DO have WMD, massive military complexes and stolen US designs for highly deadly weapons.
Then there is the cyber angle. I suspect America could be pwned quite quick.
Lastly, who is gonna supply walley word with cheap tupperware and lawnmowers to the post nuke surviviors. There is no way that could happen.
China is the new economy. Western Europe is just on a downhill spiral.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
I don't think anyone really has to. There isn't enough food between China and Alaska, or between Alaska and CONUS, to feed 300 million people. So if the Chinese decided to do something like this, we could reasonably expect the one survivor to be completely unnoticed in the trail of 300,000,000 corpses along the way.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
All of the LCDs I have bought lately have been made in China. Their export ban changes nothing with regard to finished products.
Man, you really need that seminar!
It does not even make sense! China restricts exports and you propose retaliation by restricting imports?!
I assume you live in US (who else always talked about reviving local industries?), do you even know how many export restrictions there are in the US? Crypto, high-tech stuff, whatever vaguely related to "national security", you name it.
All countries (except those that have already became a vassal state of the US) restricts exports of critical resources, and this is allowed in WTO treaties. Examples from countries all over the world include restricting natural resources, science & technology, and even critical infrastructure (you do know that US blocked a company from buying the operations of the Panama Canal for "national security" reasons?).
Only in /. would this non-news story becomes news worthy to make the front page.
Oliver.
Maybe they're getting tired of exchanging their wealth for our paper. I admire the way China is focused like a laser on their infrastructure and the acquisition of raw materials, while we're busy making up new problems to solve as a way of avoiding the very serious ones we already have. Perhaps if we focused on production, rather than consumption, we might have a little extra wealth to spend on our own decaying infrastructure.
China has a lot of coastline, but even so I imagine that most of its population aren't capable of swimming the Bering Straits, so boats will be a serious limiting factor on the number of people they can move.
True. And actually this isn't just the case in the USA; there are virtually no new refineries anywhere in the world.
But actually the main hurdle isn't the NIMBY syndrome or over-regulation - it's a simple matter of return on investment. No-one wants to build a refinery because they take a long time to build, and a long time to recoup your investment, and the world's oil supply is known to be running out. Globally, oil-fields are now considered to be at peak production levels; that's to say, it's unlikely that there will ever be more oil being pumped than there is today. So building new refining capacity is a poor investment. Instead, people are just making do with what there is. That's why Iran is now importing refined petroleum from Venezuela.
Makes perfect sense: we won't export "super computers" like the Playstation to China. China had to figure out what they have that we want and then squeeze it. With all the "green" technology relying on electric motors, we need those rare earth magnets. Bravo, China. Bravo.
Do you really expect a country that at least used to charge families for the bullets used to execute family members to act in a humanitarian way?
NO. I expect them to exact revenge.
Uuum, what have the Chinese nationals to do with their asshole government? They are not their government. It's like punishing you for the murderings by the US Army in in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wouldn't you feel unfairly treated?
Perhaps they even go to American schools to *avoid* "their" government.
It's people with your mindset that create hatred against a whole nation for the fault of a few.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
This is typical protectionist crap. Sorry, but you may be right about businesses thinking short term, but if America starts banning foreign nationals from its schools, and slapping tariffs on foreign imports, how does that make America any better than China?
And for the record, America DOES still slap tariffs on foreign imports into this country. Usually at the behest of the powerful lobbies. Ever look at things like sugar and wheat imports? Both have either rather large tariffs, or just subsidies for the domestic industry. Why? Because the industry lobbies for those products demanded it. And it has caused a lot of friction with America's trading partners.
Hell, I remember a 'free trade' agreement a few years ago with Australia where not only did America put tariffs on Australian wheat imports (because of pressure from the US wheat lobby), they also insisted as part of their free trade deal that Australia adopt something similar to the DMCA as part of the deal - at the behest of the RIAA/MPAA. So if you really believe America has been doing other countries a favor in it's trading practices (Food for Oil anyone? Or how about withholding aid money, which is supposed to be completely unrelated to trade), then you're deluded.
In short, protectionism is bad no matter what. Now whether China is banning these exports because it truly doesn't have enough to satisfy domestic demand, and thus can't afford to supply foreign demand, or they're trying to use this threat to gain more concessions from the international community is irrelevant. Instituting protectionist policies won't help Sino-American relations, and considering, as you have said, America relies so heavily on China for it's manufacturing of almost everything we buy, America just can't afford to ruin it's relationship with yet another country, especially one it relies so heavily on.
America used to be able to take the high moral ground, and used to be viewed in a generally favorable light in the world. It's America's own greed and arrogance (not to mention going around the world like a bull in a china shop sticking it's nose in everyone else's business) that has tarnished this reputation. The election of Obama has actually started to repair this a little, but only when America starts playing fair with the rest of the world again (ie. treating other countries as equals, as opposed to approaching each trade deal as a "we want this, give it to us or else you're not our friend anymore!" deal) will it actually gain respect again. You seem quick to cry 'foul!' when another country starts using the same tactics America has been using for decades against America. You (ie. America) wrote these new trading rules, don't be surprised when someone else plays by them.
This distinctly reminds me of an old joke.
A man walks into a Chinese restaurant and sees the owner reading the paper and smiling. He asks what he's happy about and he points to the front page of the paper which says "100000 Chinese killed in combat!" with "10000 Japanese killed". The man is confused as to why such a stunning loss would be cause for happiness. The Chinese man replies "At this rate, there soon won't be any Japanese left!".
China is BIG. They've got roughly 1/5 of the world's people. They've got more people than the EU, the US, Japan, and even Russia all put together.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
It will get more expensive, but we still have significant oil reserves
Rare metals, who knows. If it gets down to national survival, there's a buhzillion acres in federal land (parks and etc) that are currently off limits to mining, but that could change fast.
And we are just scratching the surface on R&D with biofuels. Corn (any cheap sugars) ethanol and soybean (and many other crops) biodiesel are mere first gen efforts, they work right now but are resource and cash expensive. Once next gen gets rolling, like with engineered algae and waste biomass conversion and so on, which could be combined with solar and wind power to run the conversion facilities, we could have liquid transportation fuels for a long time, indefinitely really, as long as we also keep working on better efficiencies and get a lot of the commuter cars running on electricity, and save the liquid fuels more for long haul trucking and ag machinery and aircraft uses etc..
Revenge? It's not revenge. It's their resources, they can CHOOSE to sell it to us, or they can CHOOSE to hoard it for their own use, or they can CHOOSE to turn it into a life sized replica of the pyramids just because they can. That's the nature of it being THEIRS.
Looking at the history of things like rubber, tea, diamonds and oil, it would seem that we are not aware that we have no God given right to the resources of others, no matter how much we tell ourselves we need it for our survival. Has UK/US historical foreign policy gotten that far into the public mindset that we now get all angsty and self-righteous whenever some country decides that they need their resources more than we need their resources? Seriously people, if we're going to think this way and then acquiesce to the military being used to go fetch those resources and destroy the other country in the process, then lets at least not act all surprised when they get fed up and fly planes into our buildings.
I hate printers.
I hear ignorance speaking. China is definitely moving into the 21st century. Their arms may not yet be equal to everything the west has, but they are catching up.
But, more importantly, China can suffer losses at a 100 to 1 ratio, and win against any competitor. If it came to war, the west would either form a coalition, or lose. Oh yeah, we could go nuclear - but so can they. Warring with China isn't something that you want to see happen. It wouldn't be a walk in the park.
Perhaps most people are unaware that China has been involved in all the wars in Asia over the decades? Mostly indirectly - supplying "advisors", technical advice and training, putting observers on the ground, and offering moral and political support.
N. Korea still stands as a thorn in the west's side.
There is no longer a "South" Vietnam.
Discounting China's ability to fight, based on the poor quality of outdated hardware is foolish and dangerous.
More, China isn't looking for a conventional war, any more than we are. "Assassin's Mace" is a plan to gain world domination via assymetrical warfare. The restrictions on strategic resources is part of that plan, just as the flooding (devaluing) of the market in past years was part of that plan.
Go ahead, mock the "sleeping giant", if you will. It only exposes your ignorance.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Problem is, we aren't fighting, let alone choosing our battles. China's export industry is expanding throughout Africa and Asia at exponential rates, while our exports shrink. Worse, American corporations are actively exporting technology and jobs to China. IBM, among others, are moving out of the country.
The corporate world has largely abandoned the United States, and many of those who have abandoned us have thrown in with China.
There IS a war, of sorts, and China appears to be winning it.
Our military might may outclass China's, but military muscle is useless without logistics. All of the world's greatest military leaders have been masters logistics. Poor logistics killed the German army on the eastern front, remember? Most people claim that the Russian winter killed that army, but in fact, it was the lack of logistics. If humans on one side of the war survived the winter, then the humans on the other side of the war could have survived - had they planned ahead, and provided the shelter, clothing, and food required to survive such an environment.
"when you use deception" and "I am wary of playing hardball with China". I assure you, China is playing hardball, and we are being deceived.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
At current recovery rates and tech level, yes, but that will get better, there's more there, and they are still finding big fields elsewhere, like the recent big gulf discovery..and who knows what they have squirreled away in the arctic, either known about and kept secret, or still to be found.
Combined with more efficient vehicles,(a LOT more efficient, it's possible today with bog standard today's tech, every place BUT the US has a much wider choice of better mileage vehicles) and electric vehicles, and using what petroleum we have in blends with advanced biofuels, we could get by on a reduced petroleum supply load for even longer.
And telecommuting, a few tens of billion in better data infrastructure could eliminate the need for hundreds of billions worth in commuting costs and pollution., which is cheaper and easier, transporting some electrons, or millions of meat sacks in heavy steel boxes twice a day?
Giant office towers that are there just so folks can sit in front of a computer screen are *rather wasteful*, when folks can stay home and sit in front of a computer screen. All that commuting and having to keep those huge buildings running, proly 3/4ths wasted right there just because a lot of these companies haven't had the right incentive (that would be clubs to the head to get them to wake up) and cut loose from the Ebenezer Scrooge and Bob Cratchitt 1700s mentality of the necessity of BEING at the office all the time, and make better use of the tech we have now and enter the 21st century. Plus think of the sheer millions of man hours that could be saved not riding in a car or bus or train or even a dang bicycle back and forth and back and forth and back and forth to work.
We can go a long ways to dropping petroleum (and coal and natgas and..) demand without sacrificing any cool modern way of life, just by doing things smarter instead oif perpetuating obsolete tech because a few already rich people can skim so much profit from it. Heck, we could probably get by with very few new powerplants if they adjusted building codes (and mortgage loan approvals) to require a lot more insulation. The bulk of our electricity use is heating and cooling, and I know that this demand/requirement level can be dropped drastically, I used to be in that biz for a while, retrofitting for more energy efficiency.
You can read a scosh about it here, superinsulation. It's amazing, you got to see it to believe it almost. You can get some serious savings by just *using* tech that has already been developed decades ago. It ain't sexy for wallstreet skimmers and gamblers that much, so it isn't pushed "in the market" as it could be, or for academic wanking research, but it IS possible. No new nuthin needs to be invented or funded by vulture capitalists or needs "government studies". Just double or triple our generic 50s and 60s level insulation that exists in millions of homes and buildings, along with a few other tweaks like better windows and doors and so on, and you'd be surprised how that works out for the electric bill.
Easy enough done with a simple one page legislative bill and decent and credible sized tax credits, extended for some years. It could create a million new and actually *useful* jobs and save hundreds of billions in energy costs and dramatically reduce air pollution. But no one big company could get a monopoly on it, not a lot of patents to troll with, etc, so it ain't pushed, and dang sure the energy companies don't push it, cuts directly into the ole bottom line there. Lip service at best, they push what I would term 1/4 ass efforts, not even half assed. And they call that "good cents". I call it deliberate misdirection and marketing propaganda.
You want to see what really could be accomplished today, with both housing and transportation, check out some of the designs at the solar decathlon competition.