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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."
"And then World War 3 was fought over dirt."
"Don't you mean land, Grandpa?"
"No, dirt. But it was extra special expensive dirt. I shot me a lot of Chinese just to get a wheelbarrow full. It paid for your fancy university education. And your radiation pills."
Just nuke China. I'm tired of waiting for the new Fallout game.
So this is the reason Zen Magnets are out of stock?
... that all of our electronics are made in china. At first I was worried about what this would mean for electronics, then I remembered that nothing is actually made in Japan, just designed there, sometimes.
We should probably note here that the Wall Street Journal printed all kinds of denials from the Chinese. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704062804575509640345070222.html Me, I'm just annoyed that we can't get a real industrial policy together to support a rare earth metals industry in the US. Got annoyed enough to write a piece for The Atlantic about it: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/worried-about-chinas-monopoly-on-rare-elements-restart-american-production/63444/ One thing to watch out for on the rare earth metal tip is that the Department of Defense is releasing a report on their use for military purposes in the beginning of October. Will be interesting to see what they say.
Which would screw over Mexico, since Tequila, one of the main ingredients in a Sunrise, is basically their only legal export.
Never had a malibu sunrise? It's pretty damn good.
every (non ssd) hard drive has four rare earth magnets in the arm positioning system... I wonder what this will do for hard drive production?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
It's possible to use a nuclear reactor to generate these rare metals. But, it's so expensive that nobody does. How much would neodymium have to cost, per kilogram, before it would be economical to use reactors to synthesize the element?
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.
Simpsons did it.
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.
This has just been the product of one of the stupidest cases of over-reactions of all time on all sides.
Japan's holding a Chinese fishing captain who was fishing off of waters claimed by both Japan and China. Japan refuses to release the captain, so China asks for an informal ban on rare earth exports to Japan for the rest of the month. Both sides are being driven to some completely meaningless conflict by hardliners. China's hardliners see no reason to back down because they want to flex their muscles. Japan's hardliners see no reason to back down because they think they can benefit politically in future elections. And all of this because they can't agree how to settle a case about a fishing boat.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
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
The fisherman story is a big piece of this story, but not all or even half of it. The real issue at stake has to do with some little tiny rock in the East China Sea. It was recognized as an island and part of Japan's soveriegn land by treaties with the US in WW2, but historically has been used by both China and Japan. The fact is, it doesn't really qualify as an island by the international legal definition; it's just a dead volcano with no active life or anything. Just a big rock.
However, if the Japanese can claim it as their territorial grounds, then what comes along with that is the 200 mile exclusive economic zone, and apparently that area has some of the best commercial fishing in East Asia as well as being suspected of having substantial undiscovered mineral and gas deposits. So while the talk about a fisherman is noteworthy, he's just a pawn, like this rare earth metals embargo is also a pawn, in this game over access to exploit those resources.
Japan isn't self-sufficient in the food area either. I hear they get most of their food, especially rice, from China. I've heard some estimates that if the food they get from China were to disappear and weren't replaced, they'd be facing starvations in about a month (though I don't have a citation on that, so that may be wildly inaccurate). Not to mention that Japan is militarily defenseless against China, and even if China didn't feel like getting their hands dirty, they could always tell North Korea to start acting up at Japan. In other words, Japan doesn't really have a strong foothold to be poking China like this. I guess they have a lot of faith that China will agree to a diplomatic solution.
More likely though, the bureaucratic head of the Japanese coast guard was pissed off at another part of the bureaucracy and wanted them to lose face. Or maybe he just decided that the last decade-long recession to hit Japan was pretty nice, so he should do his best to make sure the current one lasts that long too by sabotaging manufacturing dependent on those rare earth exports.
... 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!
This is so damn typical. Congress passes a law that has negative consequences so they pass another law to try to fix the consequences. Congress is responsible for the decline of rare earth mines in the first place. For example, a good junk of the Mojave was home to several rare-earth mines that were put out of business when Senator Feinstein pushed through the Desert Wilderness Protection act.
Solar farms are out of luck when they try to site in the Mojave for the same reason - Feinstein has blocked off huge chunks of land.
Instead of subsidizing mining, perhaps repealing Senator Feinstein's handiwork would be a good place to start.
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.
I'll sure be happy when the figure out how to grow mass quantities of Fe16N2 crystals to make even stronger magnets so we can forget about rare-earth.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Oh how wrong you are
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_War
This was covered in the Economist last week.
The US has some of the largest deposits of rare earths in the world. One big location is Mountain Pass, California. The mine there was closed in 2002, because it wasn't competitive with the China price. (Or with China's mining with a complete lack of environmental controls.)
The Mountain Pass mine is being reopened under new management. In a few years, this problem will be over.
The problem with rare-earth mining is that, since the materials are rare, the waste problem is huge. The early stages of extractoin are messy. Big acid lakes, things like that.
Speak for yourself.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
It's nice to see the Chinese are advancing. In the past they would just trump up some charges on a random Japanese Businessman that had the ire of the local party chair. Now it's a two part grab. 1) Make your point on the captain. 2) Force highly skilled manufacturing to China so you can steal the intellectual property!
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.
I imagine the robots are heavily dependent on those rare earth metals.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
"All your rare earths are belong to us."
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Its about time.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
You mean recently?
You ever heard of Troy?
The bulk of the USA's titanium during the cold war came from Russia. They bought it through fake companies and then used it on the very spy planes that they used to spy on them. I always rather enjoyed that little bit of information.
Indeed, a thousand ships were launched when King Menelaus discovered that he had run out of condoms.
The greatest warrior on either side was Achilles, who was completely invulnerable everywhere except his heel. According to Homer, he slew Hector in a single blow with his unsheathed manhood.
We can thank the Trojan War for incredible advances in chemistry. Many important new developments were made in latex technology, due to the Greeks' need to properly protect the Trojan Horse.
Helen of Troy, ironically, and anachronistically, had syphilis.
Given all that, it's also rather odd that Japan wants to get rid of American military bases in Japan.
Qxe4
Japan blocks the import of cheep manga figurines from China crippling China's economy.
I've heard some estimates that if the food they get from China were to disappear and weren't replaced, they'd be facing starvations in about a month (though I don't have a citation on that, so that may be wildly inaccurate).
Urban Japan, at least. In the smaller towns it's still quite common to farm your own rice. The smallish (population around 23,000) town I stayed in was surrounded by rice paddies. Apparently there were a couple of weeks when everything else in the town stopped as everyone went out to either plant or harvest rice. Pretty much every family owned at least one (smallish) field, which grew the majority of the rice that they ate. I'm sure India would love to sell them a lot more food, if China wanted to stop...
Not to mention that Japan is militarily defenseless against China, and even if China didn't feel like getting their hands dirty, they could always tell North Korea to start acting up at Japan
The USA has treaty obligations towards Japan that make declaring war on Japan equivalent to declaring war on the USA. Even North Korea isn't that stupid.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The world should simply accepte that there's a new Master and no longer is called USA.
Watch it on YouTube. It has a ninja and panda! :D
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
That's not true... I'm constantly at war with myself.
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
"rare earths"?
I'll say. There's only one in existence.
The trojan war was a double entendre; sure it started of as an expedition to retrieve Helen, but inexplicably a horse was involved in a way which can only be described as a Freudian slip.
Not yet. China has a shortage of females due to the one child policy though ....
Japan has a food self-sufficiency rate of about 40%, which, while one of the lowest amongst the advanced nations, is pretty damn good considering 70% of Japan is mountain/hills and much of the rest is occupied by cities.
I would think Japan doesn't import that much rice from China, especially after the gyoza scare. An couple in my wife's hometown grow all their own food to avoid any Chinese products, sometimes giving us some 100% soba noodles they prepare by hand. Even around the boundaries of Tokyo, you can see lots with rice growing in them surrounded by buildings.
3 is supposed to be "profit!!" and you have no question marks. Are you a business major or something?
Not sure if it is still true, but for many years California was actually the source of a large portion of Japan's food. I believe we still supply roughly half of their imported rice. So they might go a bit hungry, but it is doubtful they would starve if China cut off their supplies.
Politics is much more important to the Chinese than your business. That is the takeaway here. The Chinese governemnt is willing to plunge most of the industrial west into chaos over fishing rights to a patch of ocean around uninhabitated islands that the Japanese have controlled since at least 1895. The rare earth issue is a blessing in disguise. Until 1984, the United States was by far the biggest producer of rare earths from it Mountain Pass Mine in California. After the mine was closed, the field was left to China and this is the result...they have become a political tool to compel obedience to Beijing. The Mountain Pass mine will be reopened in 2011 and US production will eventually restore balance to the world economic production...but the memory of what the Chinese will do as your trading partner should never be forgotten.
Industry officials said that mainland China’s customs agency had notified companies that they were not allowed to ship to Japan any rare earth oxides, rare earth salts or pure rare earth metals, although these shipments are still allowed to go to Hong Kong, Singapore and other destinations.
So all your ship has to do is make a stop in Hong Kong, and then it can go to Japan. Oh noes!
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
There are rare earth mines in the US, they're just inactive due to China being able to do it cheaper.
But this recent trade conflict has people getting local mines going again. Two rare earth mines in California are reopening and there's a new one in progress up in the northwest territories here in Canada.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Good article Alexis. Thanks for helping to bring this to the fore-front.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
China can't touch Japan. They don't have the navy for it. Basically, China couldn't defeat Japan before Japan nuked China. Japan is not currently a nuclear nation, but they have been a week away for thirty years. They've got nuclear power plants and a space agency. All they need to do is replace the astronauts with warheads and aim somewhat lower than the moon.
I see no problem with the Chinese supplying all of our rare-earth needs. If they're willing to sacrifice their environment for short-term gains then so be it. We're in the process of collecting their rare-earth elements in our landfills, which one day will serve as a valuable strategic resource.
Similarly, I think the US should hold off on oil extraction until the other nations have started to exhaust their supplies. Once the prices start to rise, only then should we tap our reserves.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Within a week the Obama administration will take some dramatic and highly public step against Chinese imports to the US. The pretense will be that Japan is an important ally. The actual reason will be Democrats desperate need to find an issue, any issue, that will rally the working class voter to the election five weeks from now. The left has been looking for a justification to attack Chinese imports but has not been willing to initiate a trade war. China just handed them a campaign platform.
No, the fact that China buys lots of treasuries won't prevent this; the Fed is buying treasuries with printed money now. No, the fact that China will probably react by embargoing US trade won't stop it either; the left doesn't care about the US farmer or his agriculture exports to China. No, the vanishingly small amount of exports that isn't agriculture won't stop them either.
The left is starting to realize that letting working class prosperity evacuate to China makes for an unreliable constituency. The right is about to discover that China is rapidly transitioning from cheap-labor-r-us to international belligerent.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
"China Embargos Rare Earth Exports To Japan"
In response, Japan is restricting their exports of Spirit, Cactus, and the Small Faces to China. "We will not be bullied by such blatant violations of international law" said Hiro Tashakawa the Japanese minister of under appreciated supergroups and late 60's rock bands. Representives from Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominos, and Mountain were unavailable for comment.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Japan isn't self-sufficient in the food area either. I hear they get most of their food, especially rice, from China. I've heard some estimates that if the food they get from China were to disappear and weren't replaced, they'd be facing starvations in about a month (though I don't have a citation on that, so that may be wildly inaccurate). Not to mention that Japan is militarily defenseless against China, and even if China didn't feel like getting their hands dirty, they could always tell North Korea to start acting up at Japan. In other words, Japan doesn't really have a strong foothold to be poking China like this. I guess they have a lot of faith that China will agree to a diplomatic solution.
More likely though, the bureaucratic head of the Japanese coast guard was pissed off at another part of the bureaucracy and wanted them to lose face. Or maybe he just decided that the last decade-long recession to hit Japan was pretty nice, so he should do his best to make sure the current one lasts that long too by sabotaging manufacturing dependent on those rare earth exports.
Japan grows about 10% more rice than it consumes. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#Production_and_export.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
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.
And China's escalation here, if it's real, may directly lead to the end of their monopoly on world supply. That would be a huge economic and strategic loss.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
nah, as long as we keep up the tech with effectively engineering sample levels of production so we can expand if needed, it's better to let china despoil themselves and keep our land and water clean
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
All rice sold in Japan is domestic. Japan buys rice from the US (due to a trade agreement), but dumps it (also known as "stockpiling", but it is *never* used and is generally not allowed to be sold). Last year there was a shortage of rice in south east Asia, so the Japanese asked for and got permission to sell some of their stockpile in Asia. Supermarkets label the origin of almost all food in Japan, so I can tell you that Chinese imports make up a large volume of non-staple foods. The vast majority of food imported from China (based on reading labels in the supermarket) is frozen vegetables, mushrooms, pickles and seaweed. If the Chinese were to stop exportation of food to Japan tomorrow, it would definitely have an impact, but not starvation.
Japan actually has a law on the books that disallows importation of staple foods into the country. It was put in place after WWII when many many people starved to death due to US blockades. Having said that, Japan is nowhere near self sufficient for food as lately they have relaxed their importation policies (due to heavy lobbying by the US).
Mods: the truth by definition is not a troll. Whether justified or not, environmental groups will take steps to control or completely block actions that involve new mining and refining operations in the US. I may even agree with and support their arguments in this case, but opposition is inevitable. Stating this particular truth in no way implies that environmental preservation is good or bad or that such statements should be modded as troll. Stick to the facts and follow the rules.
This action by China (if it is not a bluff) represents only a temporary shortfall in supply. Prices will rise, fingers will point, other mining operations will start up and China will lose both business and goodwill. All it takes is Japan's willingness to give China the finger and refuse to negotiate trade agreements in parallel with territory and sovereignty issues. On the flip side, Japan might not have the stones to hold out for an international resolution. In that case, China hikes prices and Japan takes the economic hit in part and the rest of the technological world takes up the remaining slack. All this while China gets richer.
Because of this, I find it unlikely that China will actually uphold such an embargo. It would be a threat used as a lever, and a weak one at that. This fits with the reported trigger event, a Chinese national held in Japan. China isn't exactly well-known for caring about their people, but it does give them an opportunity to wave the swagger stick a little. Too much and they risk international repercussions, but just a little bit and nobody other than Japan will remember it next week.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
But think of the children!
This shouldn't be called an "embargo". They're not preventing anyone else from trading with Japan, only their own nationals, and only rare earths. It's a very very narrowly targetted export ban. The problem is, it can't be effective. Someone else buys a little more in China, sells it to someone else who sells it to someone else who sells it to someone in Japan. It's fungible.
The fact that Japan is not self sufficient in the food area makes negative comments about their declining population seem pretty silly.
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.
This is not a dispute over a fisherman. It is a territorial dispute over a very large chunk of water around a disputed island. It is also an opportunity for China to put pressure on Japan and indirectly on the US (which relies on Japanese to manufacture many critical industrial components, many military in nature that can no longer be manufactured in the US because the US is no longer economically competitive in many high-tech industrial technologies. China sees this as an opportunity to exert its growing economic influence at a time that the West is not economically or politically able to respond because it is bogged down in two land wars in Central Asia. They are sending a signal that they are now the dominant power in Asia and the rest of the world can expect them to be the dominant economy in the world in just 10-15 years time at current rates of growth. This will almost certainly happen sooner as the republicans who look as if they are about to come into power are determined to shrink the US government, which will almost certainly speed up the difference in infrastructure and military preparedness. If we get into it with Iran, expect the Chinese who rely heavily on Iranian oil to come into more direct conflict with the US, probably by igniting inflation in the US by pulling their underwriting of US debt instruments that are all that is propping up the US financial system presently.
If the China Japan situation escalates our treaty obligations will draw us into it. Its unclear how the US will fare being so dependent on middle eastern oil, which can be easily shut off at the Straits of Hormuz by the Iranians and its military highly dependent on satellites for its battlefield and tactical awareness. The strategic petroleum reserve won't last long in an all out draw down. To make matters worse, just a few well coordinated EMP generating blasts in space and the US military will be largely blind. No wonder DARPA is scrambling to counter the new maneuverable Chinese killer satellites with high altitude solar aircraft. My guess is the republicans will let Japan fall to the Chinese and go into a more conciliatory mode to keep the Chinese money needed for tax breaks for billionaires safe.
Screw 'em. It's cheaper to let China dig theirs up until their gone, then we can go after our own. By the time those are used up, we should be able to start mining them from the moon or asteroids.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Indeed the post is one of the few big news sites i could find that even mentions the story. And as pointed out in the parent post they quote all kinds of denials.
Reuters and BBC for example do not even mention the embargo one way or another.
Does anyone involved have any evidence one way or another? some one working for a japanese company expecting deliveries for example? It would be nice to get some clarity on this...
Pseudo-capitalism is just another name for socialism republican style. The rich and their corporations use the government to subsidize their businesses through tax write-offs and no-bid contracts, and absorb any losses, while the poor and middle-class consumers can work harder to pay for it.
In China its pretty much the same thing, only the rich capitalists are high ranking party officials and the military. The only real difference is that the Chinese have cut out the middlemen, politicians that are bought by the rich to foster the pretense of a truly capitalist system, where markets operate fairly. Without the middlemen, the Chinese are able to invest heavily in infrastructure, education, and health-care that it propelling their economy on 4-8% growth for the past 30 years.
It's true that Japan isn't self-sufficient in food (coverage ~43%), and the only product where they are self-sufficient is rice, thanks partially to high tariffs on rice import.
If I go to the closest supermarket and look at fresh products, I got: milk from Nagano / Hokkaido prefecture, lettuce from Miike prefecture, salmon from Chile, beef from Australia, pork from the US, chicken from Aichi prefecture. Of course, bananas are from the Philippines, oranges from California, onions from China, and for transformed products the origin is not mentioned.
This may have been a better link.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
you actually believe that myth?
there was a Troy, but no such war
"over fishing rights"
Keep in mind those fishing rights keep millions of people fed.
Well, you might be correct, temporarily. As pointed out above, when things are right, Japan has done pretty well too -- and with a similar plan MITI used to strike fear into us here for example, but no more. Could it be something more basic, like demographics? Japan is sinking as their population ages, similar to the USA. China, due to the one child policy will soon face the same thing themselves, not enough young to support the old. Japan is developing robots to help their older folks survive, and maybe we should be looking into that ourselves, as our demographic curves aren't all that different. There are makers and takers (no, not the old saw, exactly). Only in the middle of life is one a net contribution to their society, if even then. The young are supported, as are the old. Our baby boomers are all hitting retirement, hence various effects on entitlement programs (gawd how I hate that word and what it implies), the investment markets, and it's as predictable as the earth's rotation, but no one wants to see the the light at the end of the tunnel is a train and think about what to do about it. GoodLuckWithThat, as we say here, it's not rocket science to predict the broad sweep of the future from this kind of information. Exactly when things hit a tipping point is hard to predict, but not IF they will. We are living in what's about to be really interesting times, and yes, I mean that in the Chinese sense.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Actually, the lack of question marks and a profit step betray him as a non-business major.
"Not to mention that Japan is militarily defenseless against China" I suggest you check your facts (no really, please go and look up the JDF and reconsider your position). Japan has a reasonably large and strong military - although placed in a defensive posture. It is arguably far better trained, equipped, and led than the Chinese military. China could not simply walk-over Japan as you seem to think. It would be messy if they ever came to blows.
"Heck, I am sure China wasn't exporting them food during WW2."
Not much after the US got done with the Jap merchant fleet. Choking Hirohito's Imperial ambitions required choking Japanese logistics, and those mostly moved by sea:
http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm#dotjmf
"UNITED STATES STRATEGIC BOMBING SURVEY
SUMMARY REPORT
(Pacific War)
WASHINGTON, D.C.
1 JULY 1946
DESTRUCTION OF THE JAPANESE MERCHANT FLEET
Japan's merchant shipping fleet, was not only a key link in the logistical support of her armed forces in the field, but also a vital link in her economic structure. It was the sole element of this basic structure which was vulnerable to direct attack throughout a major portion of the war.
Japan entered the war with some 6,000,000 tons of merchant shipping of over 500 tons gross weight. During the war an additional 4,100,000 tons were constructed, captured or requisitioned. Sufficient information was secured by the Survey in Japan concerning this 10,100,000 tons to tabulate ship by ship, (a) the name end tonnage, (b>) the date, location; and agent of sinking or damage, and (c) the present condition and location of such ships as survived. The sources from which evidence was obtained were in some respects conflicting. Where possible these conflicts have been resolved. The Joint Army and Navy Assessment Committee has tentatively arrived at similar results and is continuing its efforts further to refine the evidence. The Survey believes that the figures included in the following breakdown will not differ significantly from the final evaluation of the Joint Army and Navy Assessment Committee.
Eight million nine hundred thousand tons of this shipping were sunk or so seriously damaged as to be out of action at the end of the war. Fifty-four and seven-tenths percent of this total was attributable to submarines, 16.3 percent to carrier based planes, 10.2 percent to Army land-based planes and 4.3 percent to Navy and Marine land-based planes, 9.3 percent to mines (largely dropped by B-29s), less than 1 percent to surface gunfire, and the balance of 4 percent to marine accidents. "
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
And it has made them the richest country in the world.
If I could quibble a bit here, I'm not sure they're actually the most wealthy nation in the world as measured by total assets, and I'm almost certain they're still on the lower half in terms of assets per person. Just because they're getting trillions in export sales and US debt payments doesn't mean they're particularly wealthy in any socially meaningful sense; there's 1.2 freaking billion of them to split that pie, and it's split even more unevenly than in the US. Only the upper class, as in top 20% or less, live as well as or better than Americans with the median income.
They may have a ridiculous pile of cash and a huge industrial machine, but it's not doing all that much for them so far.
Even among Chinese people, only few could be so delusional about China's true economy power. There is really very little to brag about at the high end. The reform has been in progress for 30 years, the result isn't anywhere close to what other countries achieved in 30 years after WWII.
Isn't it interesting that American left loves dictatorship? They adored Hitler. Then Soviet. Now China. The idea of forced labor is so dear to them, just like the Democrat in the 19th century.
People who complain about the ineffectiveness of American capitalism should explain why USA has been the lead for so many years. The mightiest centrally planned economy, Soviet Union, what happened to it? What has it contributed to human advancement in its lifetime?
The US needs to throw a bunch of money subsidizing manufacturing of stuff (toys, clothing, shoes, household goods etc) in Mexico.
Has several benifits:
1.More stuff being made in Mexico means more people are needed to make it which means more jobs for Mexicans and less Mexicans who want to cross the border into the US
2.Less dependance on China as a source for stuff
3.Less risk of "third shift" and IP violations (unlike China where the Chinese government and Chinese companies routienly use trade secrets, proprietary information, patented technology, copyrighted materials, trademarks etc with impunity either to produce bootleg products or to make the home-grown products better, those things dont happen in Mexico as far as I know)
4.The ability for retailers like Wal-Mart to play Chinese and Mexican manufacturers off against each other on pricing (i.e. they can use the price quoted to them from one factory in one country as a bargaining chip against another manufacturer in the other country)
5.Easy access to the US with faster shipping times and lower shipping costs.
He who can destroy the magnets, controls the magnets, and he who controls the magnets, controls the universe.
Stupid control freaks, I for one... lets just say I would have fought on the "other" side of the Butlerian Jihad.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
The stupid master-slave view comes up again. They don't own the place, it's just another example of China selling stuff to anyone.
What about all of those jobs Americans refuse to, maybe we can import our unskilled labor from India, I like curry better than tacos, win-win.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Just you wait till they start building war robots....
We will all be speaking japanese, watching anime, and eating ramen while washing ti down with a bottle of ramune....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
That's an entire anime series about the farm production in Japan.
Well then I really have no excuse for getting that wrong if there was an entire anime series about it.
As of now, the Chinese government is denying that there is an embargo over Rare Earth exports.
http://english.cri.cn/6826/2010/09/24/1821s596078.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTKB00705420100924
There might still be some element of truth to it, but all the reports are getting confusing.
Don't quote me on this.
That's just a weird misunderstanding to grow your own conspiracy theory. It is nowhere near being organised. The state ownership is really just another way to tax.
To change it, you have to get a whole new international treaty. All this shit is from old treaties hashed out long ago to try and solve the problem of what is mine and what is yours.
Not saying they can't be changed, but it isn't trivial You have to get all the countries together for a big round of negotiations and of course people aren't going to want to change and so on and so forth.
International law is complicated and rather difficult to change.
Every nation should be self-sufficient in production of their food grains.
Hope WTO regulates accordingly.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
In other news, Finland embargos Rare Exports to the rest of the world...
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I don't think that the parent measured their wealth by the living standards of the majority population. I think he was summing up the cash pile that the country has altogether, most of it in the hands of very few, politically engaged individuals, companies and the political party.
And yes, he is probably right. China owns most of the United States debt (they are not buying more though, too volatile), they are building up a big pile of gold, invest in raw material producing industries abroad, they have an immense market production capacity for electronics and consumer goods and well established production chains backed by local mining / resource supply sources.
They also engage in R&D abroad and at home very actively, and they also study the products that are produced in their factories contracted by foreign companies. And they are starting to apply the knowledge.
The political leadership there does not give a flying fuck about the average Chinese Joe though, who lives in a horribly polluted environment (part of the reason why nobody can compete with them) on a very tight budget (another reason) and can only buy crap in shops (merchandise in China is often very sub-par to our standards).
Please don't confuse social wealth / a somewhat evenly distributed wealth system with a huge pile of assets, even if it is only owned by very few.
wow. How can you write so many untruths in one post....
Disclaimer: I lived in both countries.
Japan may import some of its food, but never ever would want to rely on Chinese rice. Incidentally, rice is something sacred for most Japanese, it is treated like shit by many Chinese.
Japan's navy is a bit smaller than the Chinese, but still the second largest of Asia. And more importantly, the US has an obligation to assist Japan in any serious conflict. Those soldiers on Okinawa are not there just because it is a nice sunny island... There are also US nukes around. You do not need a lot of fate if you keep friends with your big brother. At least, for now. Also, I seriously doubt China has so much friendship with the North Koreans. In fact, they seem to try to distance themselves a bit from that country recently. And with good reasons, the regime is at least somewhat erratic... Last time they refused economic help to NK, several Chinese soldiers on the border where accidentally shot down.
Lastly, the captain is held by a court decision, not by the coastguard boss. There is (legally) nothing the government can do. Of course, most mainland Chinese have trouble understanding that courts are not part of the government everywhere...
If the US had some balls, they should side with Japan on this. Not necessary because they are right (who owns those rocks is legally murky), but because you should play politics here. And backing off on this will have serious consequences for the explorations of massive oil and gas reserves in the territorial waters close to those rocks. Japan is nowhere near as dangerous a competer for world domination compared to China. It is simply in the rest of the worlds interest to not agree on this. Giving your opponent too much for free is a good way to get pushed out of the game.
Do not get my wrong. I enjoy many things in China, and may probably agree with their government more compared to the average opinion here on slashdot. But it is not good for balance to give away these rocks.
The problem with rare-earth mining is that, since the materials are rare, the waste problem is huge. The early stages of extractoin are messy. Big acid lakes, things like that.
Aha! Then who has a lot of money, and a need for large acid lakes?
The answer: Mafia!
Therefore if the mines simply partner with the Mafia, they will have enough subsidy and capital to get going, while the cost of running the witness protection program is also reduced at the same time. It's a Win-Win-Win!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Someone MOD PARENT UP.
China has a very serious water problem. It has now reached the critical level. China relies on the west for water treatment tech. Why not just put an embargo on all water treatment tech and chemicals. Most folks would rather have water than metals.
I know they have lots of rivers, but the water is too polluted. In fact, in many places the water is so polluted that it can't even be used for agro.
...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
And yes, he is probably right. China owns most of the United States debt
Seven percent of foreign debt. That is all.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
I'm not sure I want friends that are only around when they need our help.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
That's not true... I'm constantly at war with myself.
Fighting with yourself and beating yourself up about something is definitely not the same as beating yourself off about something. Be careful to separate the actions.
That is mostly due to Japan being a small nation with few resources. They simply don't have the infrastructure to fight a prolonged battle. It has nothing to do with their desire to fight, in WWII, those guys just didn't give up, which played a huge role in the decision to drop the A-bomb versus having a D-Day type invasion of the homeland.
WWII, if you really think about it, was the triumph of quantity over quality. The Germans were 20 years ahead of us technologically, but they couldn't build enough weapons fast enough. For every Panzer tank they had, we had 20 or 30 Shermans, which were terrible tanks, but we had a lot of them. What America had was lots of infrastructure, lots of resources, and lots of manufacturing capability. Our tech was low-end compared to the Germans, but when they blew up our shit, we just kept cranking out more, and eventually wore them down.
The Japanese had few resources. After we knocked out their navy, there wasn't much left. And yet, it took us longer to defeat the Japanese than the Germans. They were more spread out, and they were more intractable. And, like I said earlier, they did not give up. They fought to the death, and that resulted in a greater causaulty count in the Pacific than in the European theater.
The point is: Don't discount Japan's ability to really show some teeth when they want. To this day, their TV Samurai dramas emphasize noble honor in dying while destroying your enemy. That makes them, to put this in geek terms, more like the Klingons -- and therefore, you should consider them dangerous when provoked.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Who cares about the individual wealth? When power is measured, then the nice houses, cars and electronics owned by american suburbians and clay huts 'owned' by chinese countryside rice farmers are completely irrelevant, what matters is the cash used by the country or the elite for strategic means of control.
China cash piles are used to buy strategic assets like mineral mines in Africa. USA private millionaire cash piles would move away to switzerland or anywhere else as soon as any trouble starts, and still will be used for consumption.
I am pretty sure when the English and French were duking it out in Canada it was about Beavers and Fish. At least metal is shiny, and rare earths can do interesting things not just filthy water rat fur and stinky fish. Eh? :)
Just you wait till they start building war robots....
We will all be speaking japanese, watching anime, and eating ramen while washing ti down with a bottle of ramune....
I think close to half the students at the engineering school I went to did that already... albeit most could only speak certain phrases learned from the anime.
I wouldn't be too sure of that mine reopening.
Why not? The mine is owned by Molycorp which was a subsidiary of Unocal Corp and then of Chevron after Chevron's acquisition of Unocal in 2005. China attempted to purchase Unocal in 2005 but was overruled by the Bush Adminisration. Molycorp is now a privately-owned spinoff of Chevron and began processing stockpiled rare earth ore last year. As they work down their inventory of ore, they will obtain more from their mine. The mine obtained a new 30-year operating permit in 2004. Unless you're planning on sabotage or military strikes, there seems to be no reason why Molycorp will not remove more ore from the mine beginning in 2011. Do you have any information to the contrary or are you just giving voice to vague worries and fears?
Business majors look for profits. Engineers look for solutions.
Japan just has to order some children's toys.
If it's on the periodic table, you can find it in there.