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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".
Place nail here >+
Terrorists found in Beijing and Shanghai, U.S. Troops invade.
That's ok, we still have plenty of Uranium...
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Let's hope that they don't stop dilithium shipments!
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.
The giant magnet. Pull asteroids into Earth's orbit to rain firey hell on your enemies..
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I think that if they do so they won't mind if we ( as in the other western countries) put prohibitions and restrictions of our own in other product importations. We could revive our cloth, electrodomestic, chemical, (whatever) old industries. It might be a bit expensive at first (mostly for those multinationals ) but then we can be sure of better occupation rates. I's a shame that this is only wishfull thinking...
and finally call China out on it's myriad of violations? The US and Europe seem content over bickering about Airbus and Boeing when in actuality, those two companies' violation(if any) are a real drop in the bucket compared to China's insanely flagrant violations. However, the US is an addict hooked on selling China our debt, instead of oh I don't know, not invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 we decided it was a much better idea to sell ourselves lock stock and barrel to the Chinese. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Monstar L
But how will I level my blacksmithing if they stop posting mats to the auction house? guess I'll have to take up mining :-/
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!
Or maybe someone could be held accountable.
You mean like when China executed several management types found "responsible" for these incidents? That type of accountable?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
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?
Someone is making magnates.
NO. I expect them to exact revenge.
By Chinese standard, the fact that the US has so much porn is just unheard of. Porn is not only illegal but also considered immoral.
Hold it, I thought only right wing Christian nutjobs wanted to make porn illegal? Are you trying to tell me that the Chinese government is controlled by right wing Christian nut jobs?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
...and rare earth magnates at that, since most of us on this planet are not.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Maybe we could re-arm the Soviet Union while we're at it.
Or, maybe we could all just admit that you said a dumb thing.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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
Treat them as an aggressor and there will be war and millions (of Americans, even!) might die. Treat them as a trading partner and there will be trade and millions will have manufactured goods (that they wouldn't otherwise). Not exactly a difficult decision...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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..
China is now refusing to export a number of rare earth elements. These are ones that are currently expensive to get elsewhere. In addition, they HAVE put caps on other ones. But that is not the real problem.
The real issue is that they are running around BUYING UP all the mines in the free world. Basically, they are trying hard to make a monopoly of this. The place to watch is Australia, Canada, and America. America has the largest active RE mines and China made a bid for these last year(US gov said no). They currently are trying to buy 2 start-up mines in Australia. Finally, IIRC, they DID buy a Canadian producer (though I do not recall where mines were located).
The other day I commented about how we should be mining space, to which a fool responded that it was not practical. At that time, I pointed out that long-term countries would try to limit access to various elements/minerals. Sure enough, that day was when I found out about China thinking of limiting REM. The problem is that when items are taken off the market, it means that you limit countries capabilities. That tends to make wars happen. Imagine if another GWB gets into office in say about 2 years and REM is expensive to the west. GWB would go to war over this because CHina is building up their military and will want to stop it before they get too strong. Keep in mind that China is positioning themselves for a first strike, not for a defensive position. If we want to avoid stupid wars, we MUST get into space and locate new elements/minerals esp. REMs. They are the foundation of militaries as well as electrical systems. All of our future motors and many of the advanced electronic boards depend on these.
China is not about playing fair. They are very much in a cold war with the west, whether we like it or now. If we want to prevent a hot war, we will have to prevent them from limiting our access to resources (either by war or by finding new cheap mines) and will have to bring back manufacturing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
Another big source of uncommon metals is sub-Saharan Africa - for example, something like 80% of the world's supply of either Cobalt or Coltan comes from mines in the Congo. And China has been making big inroads into that region too, in terms of international aid and trade.
There are times that being an officially godless commie state comes in handy, really. US shows up and says "we'll give you aid money as long as you don't promote safe sex, and oh, sorry, our business community is a little too nervous to really trade with you." China shows up and just says "look, we want to do business; you have resources we need."
Unsurprisingly, African governments are talking more to China these days.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I TRUST that you are kidding about tariffs, yes? They do not work. The issue is that China was given MFN and into WTO by promising to open their borders and to free their money. All good. Problem is that China has not LIVED up to their word. They still have barriers up and most of all, the money is not traded freely. It is in a "basket" that is controlled by their gov. In addition, they allow pollution (co2 and other ) to be emitted in large amounts to give an even larger boost to low costs. Our energy bill is going to be a disaster and will encourage China,India,Mexico, etc to pollute more to take more jobs.
So, here is my solution:
If we do the above, then there will be no real need for free trade acts. What is really needed is to make certain that we avoid exceptions. There are a number of countries that we allow to have one-way trade with us and do little to nothing to help those countries.
If the above is done by the west, it would bring up conditions all over the world. EU has talked about doing Free Trade agreements with Latin America, but they want to use it to push better conditions for the citizens. I have to say that it is not a bad idea, but I think the above is even better.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not really, nor is it a manufactured shortage, but it is another shot in their ongoing half-assed trade war. I say half-assed becasue while there is a definite nationalistic bent to this, China is also trying to develop it's own industries.
So, China started out dumping rare earths on the global market (find your own darn citations you needy buggers), but as they see their own internal demand ramping up, they are going to divert more of their production to their own use. Of course some of that internal use will be for exportable products. Remember that they are making big investments in battery technology. I expect they plan on having an electric car that will need the rare earths currently going into Prius motors. Expect that car to be a big export item. And it will be aimed directly at hybrids and electrics and priced low enough that their competitors will have to sell at a loss to compete on price - at least until China needs them for internal consumption.
Before China started dumping (look up your own darn citations) rare earths on the world market, the US was the major producer worldwide. The US firms that used to supply the vast majority of our needs (from our own resources) have shut down most of their production. It is very hard to compete with the combination of slave labor and non-existent safety and environmental regulations. It was a series of environmental violations given as the reason for the shutdown of one of the biggest US mines, but it may have really been related to a ability to see the handwriting on the wall regarding Chinese imports as well.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Until about 10 years ago, there were many magnesium manufacturers around the world, including one in my home town of Porsgrunn (in Norway).
When China decided that light metals was a crucial market for them, they started a bunch of very low-tech/high-pollusion magnesium smelters, and many/most Western competitors folded.
In the latest (for the year 1998) SFT (Norwegian EPA) regulations for the Porsgrunn factory (in norwegian), the limit on some pollutants was set to maximum 1 gram/year, I suspect the Chinese smelters are many orders of magnitude above this level.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
"I miss the days of over-engineered machines built of inferior materials." ... "Funny thing is, they still work. Like new."
:(
Sadly thank the Gillette razor manufacturer for creating the tread with their idea of the disposable blades, just over a hundred years ago. Since then ever more products have been designed to wear out and fail. Its the whole concept of planned obsolescence which is a big marketing tactic. (So much for conserving and using earth resources responsibly. These companies are far more (self-)interested in profit). Its disturbing how much thought goes into planned obsolescence, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
Here's an eye opening discussion about the idea of "Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence" back in 1932.
https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot_blog/consumer_society_made_break.html
Its a tactical move by companies. No wonder we have such problems now with everyone consuming earth's resources after decades of companies behaving like this.
But I don't know how it'll ever be stopped. For decades everyone has been led to believe in the idea of getting things ever cheaper, but that quietly assumes the product will fail sooner and so need replacing sooner and so in the long run, it'll end up working out more expensive. But then everyone has been also led to believe almost everything is out of fashion and so needs to be replaced regularly. While thats true of some things (especially technology due to improvements) it doesn't apply to everything we buy.
Another problem is it costs more to produce something well rather than cheaply. So the cheap companies win and the well produced product companies end up going out of business. So we are rushing towards a world that produces ever more cheap rubbish that keeps needing to be thrown away and each time its thrown away someone profits from replacing what was thrown away. So we have ever growing rubbish mountains all around the world, which is also causing ever more environmental damage.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
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.