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China Embargos Rare Earth Exports To Japan
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the Chinese government has placed a trade embargo on all exports to Japan of a crucial category of minerals used in products like hybrid cars, wind turbines and guided missiles. China mines 93 percent of the world's rare earth minerals, and more than 99 percent of the world's supply of some of the most prized rare earths, which sell for several hundred dollars a pound. The embargo comes after a dispute over Japan's detention of a Chinese fishing trawler captain whose ship collided with two Japanese coast guard vessels as he tried to fish in waters controlled by Japan but long claimed by China. The Chinese embargo is likely to have immediate repercussions in Washington. The House Committee on Science and Technology is scheduled to review a detailed bill to subsidize the revival of the American rare earths industry and the House Armed Services Committee is scheduled to review the American military dependence on Chinese rare earth elements."
Just nuke China. I'm tired of waiting for the new Fallout game.
they'll be 5 dollars more expensive.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wow... you don't want to put a resource embargo on Japan. That has a tendency to cause problems, like Pearl Harbor. Most of Japan's exports require rare earths. Without them, their economy will likely tank. Are the Chinese really this nuts? This isn't war, yet, and Japan doesn't have much of a military, but still. It's like the two were turning up the heat, from 22 C to 23, then 24, and now China just cranks it up to 93. Maybe I'm overestimating the escalation here, but wow... Is this captain really as valuable as an Austrian Archduke?
Environmentalists would stop it dead. It involves mining and extraction.
pseudo capitalism is in the process of destroying China from within. As inflation increases, natural resources deplete, environmental catastrophes take their toll, grain shortages increase, and the water continues to run out, well, things will just progress in a predictable fashion. The US need only contain China, which they are successfully doing by forcing them to buy their debt by the billions. It's a stroke of genius actually.
Ya we need to look in to this. Despite the name, Rare Earths aren't. There are plenty of them. Of course they have to be mined, refined, and all that shit. That is largely left to China simply because China pays people shit and has no safety or environmental standards. However as you accurately note, they are important, we need to be supplying ourselves.
1) Get investors
2) Buy the land in the US with REMs below
3) Start mining
Depending on who you know, step 2.5 should be asking the US gov for tariffs on rare earth metals coming from China, to help prop up the price in the US (otherwise, China will manipulate the export price to make it economically infeasible to mine in the US, and then raise prices once mining has stopped).
Helps when your government has total control over your ostensibly "capitalist" system. They recently levied some random bullshit charges against Toyota as well, a not so thinly veiled swipe at the Japanese government. Then there is Rio Tinot case where China made sure Rio Tinto didn't compete against a Chinese company by jailing their executives on a bullshit charge. They are also the same market that abhors protectionism and then is protectionist every chance they get. Even during the heyday of Japanese protectionism there were no where NEAR as bad as the Chinese. But of course, protectionism is bad, unless it benefits the Chinese, then its good.
Japan the US and the EU really should team up to take China to task for all the bullshit its pulling.
Monstar L
... But not intentionally so... if you RTFA, and I did, you'll find that rare earths actually aren't really rare. So while China MINES 93 percent of the world's rare earths, and thus supplies 99% of it, most countries COULD also do this if they wanted to. In fact, the last mine in the US closed in 2002 because, according to the article, of a radiation leak... seems these rare earth's are usually found with radioactive thorium and uranium. So what has happened is that China positioned itself as a reliable supplier of rare earths, and did so cheaply. Although the article doesn't say this, my guess is that China probably doesn't take the same safety precautions with mines and the thorium, which the article did say was costly to dispose of.
What has happened here is that China, again, produces things in an environmentally unfriendly way (since they apparently don't care much about the cost of crapping on their own country), and thus does so with cheap labor, thus becoming the most economically viable producer. Only now do they start to flex that muscle they have built...
So the world has a few choices - they can continue to rely on China, and deal with politically induced supply disruptions, find other countries that are willing to cheaply crap on their own environments and buy from them, or produce such materials locally but at much higher cost.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
The Mt Weld mine in Australia is under construction. They claim to be able to supply 20% of global production. The Mountain Pass mine is to re-open next year as well.
Oh how wrong you are
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_War
So, they're looking to subsidize the revival of the American rare earths industry?
It's not like it will evaporate out of the ground if we aren't mining it. There's no need to destroy the environment with unnecessary mining and waste money for digging's sake.
If the price goes up, we'll just start digging again. Just like every other mining cycle.
If you know a thing about history it's not just about a fishing boat.
If the rare earth supply dries up, the open market price will rise and mining these domestically will happen because it's economically sensible to do so. There's no reason to subsidize anything, Congress. Just get out of the way and let the market work.
"like Pearl Harbor"... Yea that worked out so well for Japan.
This is really going to push a lot of buttons. Good thing is that rare earths are not all that rare just hard to separate. There are large deposits in Mountian Pass California.
The US and other nations stopped mining it because China produced it cheaper... Looks like the price has gone way up. Maybe it is time we stopped depending on China for anything.
Oh and if China decided to wreck the US economy then it wrecks it own. Too much of their wealth is in US dollars.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I thought this kind of embargo would cause all sorts of sanctions from WTO members, and that China wasn't supposed to do this as a signatory of various WTO trade agreements.
I'm getting a bit annoyed at China's constant attempts at having their pie and eating it. But I guess they can get away with this - after all, way too many countries have their balls squeezed by China.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
In terms of natural resources, Japan is practically void of anything valuable. Lucky for the Japanese, China is still pissed over that whole "Rape of Nanking" deal.
China is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, and at one time had perhaps the most powerful. And yet, after their golden age, they withered and spent the rest of history being what we would call a Third World Country. Only now are they finally ready for world power status again.
Contrast them against Japan, who only a little more than a century ago, was a dirt poor, backwards country that had to be literally forced at the barrel of a gun to open their doors to the world. By the 1930's... scant decades away... they became one of the most powerful industrialized countries in the world, creating a war machine that conquered a huge part of the globe in just a few years.
And then we nuked them. They went from world power, to shambles, a conquered country with two radioactive wastes where cities had been. And in less than three decades after that, they became one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced countries on the planet... again... arguably more powerful economically than they were at the hight of their military might.
They did all this... twice... in the span of a single century, with no natural resources to speak of, save one: the Japanese people themselves.
I wouldn't count Japan out just yet.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"Oh come now Mr. Hatoyama, you don't really mean that. I have you by your balls."
However, situations like this are a sign of bigger problems, namely that tensions over resources are mounting all over the World. We will have to be very careful to avoid (any more) real and bloody conflicts.
The world should simply accepte that there's a new Master and no longer is called USA.
You guys are surprisingly lighthearted over this. The chinese control a significant percentage of various rare earth supplies. They're called "rare" for a reason. This embargo is just anther example of the strong arm tactics the chinese government so liberally employs in their bid to extend their power and influence over the world. Currency manipulation is another way they deliberately try to wreck western economies. They're succeeding, too.
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They are not nice people. China is not "free" in any sense of the word.
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As they continue to turn the screws, expect to spend more for just about everything, which will be extra hard since all the jobs are going to china...
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Enjoy your coming third world lifestyle.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Laws and regulations are added. Almost never removed.
Good luck with that repealing...
"Japan doesn't have much of a military,"
That's because it's constitutionally prevented from having more than a "defensive force" of small scale. Treaties signed with the U.S. post-WWII require the U.S. to assist in the defense of Japan if it is attacked. See Defense policy of Japan
Which brings into question what constitutes an attack. I think most would agree that a strike at Japan's economy constitutes an attack (albeit not a physical one); this is clearly an attack on Japan's economy - does this mean the US is obligated to defend Japan? Or does that clause only come into effect for physical, military conflicts (in which case all China would need to destroy Japan is restrain from actually attacking them militarily, if that is their goal)?
I don't think this will actually come anywhere near that point, probably the Chinese captain will be put through a quick trial, found guilty, slapped with a fine and deported, and the whole thing will blow over, but we'll see. I'm not sure it is really possible for them to equitably divide the area in question, so this is likely to continue to blow up in the future (not least because Taiwan also has some claim, no way in hell China is going to let them have anything).
It's not about the captain. It's about the territory. China claims the islands, but Japan controls them. If China can effectively nullify the control then they can take the islands (and the resulting territorial waters). There is a lot of disputed territory in that area. It could get messy.
"When the U.S. embargoed oil to Japan in July, 1941 it was almost a certainty that war would soon follow."
Only because of Japanese expansionist imperial policy and the invasion of Manchuria made it clear what Japanese goals were in the pacific. And their attack on Pearl Harbor later that year didnt help.
Yes, it certainty-ed war because of Japanese expansionist policy. That doesn't make it any less factual, however. One lesson nobody seems to be taught, for some reason, is that history can only be understood when you stop asking the question "who's morally responsible?".
Property is theft.
And who was responsible for that policy? Japan had minded its own business for thousands of years. It didn't even consider the possibility that it might be desirable to expand its control outside the Japanese homeland until a certain other rather aggressively expansionistic country used direct military intervention to force a regime change.
China itself is a massive country and a few small islands really are not worth their time or effort. The life of the fishing captain is.
The two hundred mile exclusive economic zone is worth more than the life of a fishing captain to the Chinese government. The precedent of getting Japan and its allies to back down on a territorial claim may be even more valuable than that.
Japan has apologized many, many times for the atrocities they perpetrated in that period. What does China want? Individual apologies issued to the surviving relatives of every victim? Even Israel does not hold such a grudge against Germany as the Chinese insist on holding against Japan.
Next question: when will the Communist Party of China apologise to its own people for the millions of innocents it murdered during the Cultural Revolution? Funny how the Chinese don't seem so eager to hold mass demonstrations about that.
I wouldn't be too sure of that mine reopening. If China's state run economy has proved one thing it's that the free-market unmanaged economies of the West will time and again fail to even comprehend the forces arrayed against them. Narrow minded "Market Based" thinking is exactly what got us into this single supplier problem and naively thinking it will get us out is well... naive.
Whatever you think the "free-market" will do to get us out of this mess, the Chinese economic mega-complex has already considered three moves in advance and is working to counter it. People don't seem to understand that China-Inc is essentially the world greatest ever hyper-corporation: millions of companies, thousands of major corporations, and hundreds of banks all working under one overall direction and policy. Just about every trick you'd expect a major-corporation to pull can and has been considered, strategised and implemented by the this acutely self aware market entity.
Before anyone begins, this isn't some kind of bigoted post. What's really going on here is that the Chinese Communist Party has developed(invented really) a state controlled, capitalism driven, centrally managed and wholly unified economy; and it's as powerful an apparatus as you'd expect. It's one of the biggest civil and economic developments in world history. And if you expect this electric dragon--a vast, powerful and above all self aware economy under the control of a central brain--to act like your traditionally lauded free market fungus-like economies--efficient, large or small, but hopelessly undirected and prone to bottom feeding-- you are mistaken from the very outset. The Communist Party does not wait for startups, demand, financiers, or any other "market forces" to act. They order entire economic sectors to be created, dismantled and transformed overnight. And it has made them the richest country in the world.
That's what the Japanese are facing here, and that's what the rest of the world is going to have to face up to as well. If you think a little mine in a mountain pass is going to change things, then you're just another free market crazy barking at the invisible hand of the moon.
May the Maths Be with you!
Food self sufficiency is sometimes a misleading statistic. Sometimes it's just cheaper to import. I am sure Japan could get that figure closer to 100% if they had to. Heck, I am sure China wasn't exporting them food during WW2.
If China embargoes food exports to Japan, I am sure many other countries would also willingly step into the breach. Argentina, Brazil, Russia, heck, USA are waiting in the wings.
And not to forget that Japan probably consumes much more food than it really needs to. Developed countries are surprisingly wasteful when it comes to food consumption. I think in the UK, about 30-40% of food is actually thrown away. In a crisis situation, with food prices rising, people will be less likely to waste it.
That's a pretty silly idea. In an actual war Japan would announce that any such ships that enter Japanese territorial waters would be sunk and if China is crazy enough to still send them it would be their fault, not Japan's.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Japan would sink those ships with little hesitation. China couldn't even take Taiwan because of their naval deficiencies, let alone Japan.
I've tried to parse your post multiple times and it appears to me that you are playing apologist for Japan's actions during WW2 and implying that moral responsibility in part extends beyond Japan and to the west.
Novel, yet dubious position to take. I think your theory will enjoy minimal support from the Chinese, Filipinos and Indonesians who lived through the Asia/Pacific war and its immediate aftermath.
The trigger for Japan's declaration of war on the US was the oil embargo, which US put in place many, many, years after initial Manchuria invasion presumably in response to the escalating brutality of the invasion or at least so say the Americans. You say Japan did not care for westerners. Actually, Japan doesn't care much for anyone, as evidence by their behaviour in occupied territories during WW2.
"They did all this... twice... in the span of a single century, with no natural resources to speak of, save one: the Japanese people themselves."
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/53050/milton-ezrati/japans-aging-economics
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The "co prosperity sphere" angle sounded fair enough; pity it wasn't the reality. I understand that general mood of the Filipino is not nearly as embittered as the Chinese, particularly around the major cities. What I find interesting is that younger generation Filipinos are as ignorant of WW2 as the younger generation Japanese. My experience is different to yours though, in Leyte for example amongst older generations is that bitterness and animosity is still there.
I am unsure of the aspersions you cast towards the Koreans, yet Japanese appalling behaviour towards civilian population and POWs during the war is well documented. It isn't mere propaganda as you imply.
If you want to make a fair measure of Japan's attitude towards its neighbours, compare Japan's attitude towards OFW workforce and migrant immigration compared to other first world nations. Japan would sooner engage in absurd pursuits like building $300k per unit nursing robots then allow its society be 'watered-down' by Filipino caregivers.
I am no lover of American activity in Philippines. I never comprehended complete and total openness that Philippine society embraced US, given US colonial aspirations and the ugliness of Subic and Angeles (never been to Angeles but its reputation precedes itself). But this is off topic: what is being discussed is the morality of Japan's actions upto and during WW2.
I am aware that the Japanese suffered during the war and attacks on Tokyo and usage of the Bomb represent highly controversial issues which will probably never be satisfactorily resolved and I think it is good and important that the controversy of using weapons of mass destruction is aired and looked at from every possible angle even 60+ years later: which conflicts your claim that history is written by the victors because if it was then such dialog would not be occurring.
But make no mistake, the Japanese were the aggressors here and they engaged in a programme of Total War underpinned with fundamentalist self righteous fervor. They could of brokered truce at any time. They could of chosen not to treat civilian populations and POWs with utter contempt. They, unlike the Germans, cannot claim that they were pushed into a corner in denied opportunity of economic prosperity or national self determination by Allied nations; they were completely in the wrong. Millions of people suffered terribly as a consequence of their actions, including themselves.
You're not supposed to feel sympathy for the Japanese of the 30s and 40s; they were guilty of terrible atrocities, but that war is over now. You're supposed to feel sympathy for the Japanese of 2010, who weren't in charge almost universally weren't even alive for World War II and are not acting particularly imperialist or aggressive.
The point is that most white westerners have similarly barbaric atrocities of imperialism somewhere in their not-too-distant past. Go back far enough and everyone can find an ancestor that murdered a rival warlord's entire tribe; if you believe that what your grandparents' neighbours did should condemn you, we are all guilty!
Eventually we have to forgive, or at least forget, if we're going to live together.
I've tried to parse your post multiple times and it appears to me that you are playing apologist for Japan's actions during WW2 and implying that moral responsibility in part extends beyond Japan and to the west.
I didn't read it that way. An attempt to explain Japan's motivations is not the same as justifying them, necessarily. Just as one might seek to explain, say, al-Qa'ida's motivations for 9/11 without suggesting that they were justified.
Meanwhile, you may disagree with the explanation presented, but that's another matter.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
For the Chinese the magic words are not "SS and Auschwitz" but "Unit 371 and Harbin". However, today the Chinese are being the aggressors - but only in an economic sense and it's not like they are the first to use the economic leverage they have. What is interesting is that fact that they're using those levers very early on in their ascendancy - which is making everyone else very nervous.
Well, it's not as though they haven't had plenty of examples to learn from, going back to the British Empire if not farther.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
You're supposed to feel sympathy for the Japanese of 2010, who weren't in charge almost universally weren't even alive for World War II and are not acting particularly imperialist or aggressive.
No, just no .. japanese of 2010 may not have undertaken those acts themselves, but that's no excuse for the denialism of history that's taking place in present day japan. When Tojo's granddaughter goes around saying things like:
"Japan did not fight a war of aggression. It fought in self-defense," she said. "Our children have been wrongly taught that their ancestors did evil things, that their country is evil. We need to give these children back their pride and confidence."
without condemnation, that is the responsibility of the japanese of 2010 to correct. This they have not done, which is why the legacy of the years leading up to the end of WW2 continue to plague us. Forgiveness will come in time, but only once the appropriate measures have been taken to atone.
The japanese of 2010 also have to take responsibility for the ongoing apartheid-like racism within their society. Numerous authors have, many of them japanese, have done much work to document this ongoing state and suffice to say that the evidence is quite damning. When the likes of David Suzuki (the well-known naturalist) goes out of his way to co-author of a book on the topic ("The Japan we never knew") then you know things are bad.
The best author on the topic is Yasunori FUKUOKA of Saitama University and many of his papers are available at http://www.kyy.saitama-u.ac.jp/~fukuoka/index.html. His opinion is not particularly complementary when speaking of the widespread discrimination against those no considered "japanese"
The Japanese government did not respect their rights as foreigners, instead they continued to oppress Korean human rights even after 1952, declaring "post-war democracy" whilst hiding the truth. The Japanese should recognize that not only the Japanese government, but also Japanese individuals should take responsibility for the difficulties imposed on Koreans in Japan.
The largest victims are the Zainichi, but similar oppression was experienced by the likes of the Burakumin and other groups.
Japan, both government and society, really needs to clean up their act before they claim to be victimised.
And this current idiocy was triggered by a Chinese fishing boat that rammed a Japanese coastguard ship, and the captain was detained. The islands where this happened have been occupied by Japan for over a century and were never populated by anyone before that. After WWII Japan was forced to give back all the territory it had occupied in Korea and China, and none bothered at the time about these insignificant islands. But about 20 years ago Chinese started wrapping themselves in the flag and calling this a great violation of their sovereignty. An issue that should be settled by low level bureaucrats is over and over again used to tear open the scabs of a war that ended in 1945.
...because, you see, a lot of people have become tired of the United States. It's very fashionable right now to hate the US and highlight everything that's wrong with the American agenda. Even in the relatively short span since the end of the Cold War, and due to some relatively severe foreign-policy bungling by the last administration, much of world opinion has focused gleefully on the failings of the US as the sole remaining superpower. Much is true.
However, any reasonable examination of a situation can only be assessed fairly when one considers the realistic alternative possibilities.
Now, with the growth of China, Asian powers may start to recognize that perhaps the (relatively) benign incompetence of the US isn't quite so bad. Every time China throws its weight around, one might be reminded that China doesn't really have much of a history of plurality, openness, liberality, or empathy. In fact, the only times that they haven't been expansive (within their understood natural frontiers), brutal, corrupt, and oppressive is when they've been too incompetent to manage their own massive domestic failings.
Perhaps the grass on the other side of the Pax Americana fence may not be that shimmering green that some seemed to think it was. Thanks China for doing your best to remind everyone.
-Styopa