RE: Query on China Export Control Law15 Nov 2022 00:13
Tony - some general views on China RE dependency culled from Google May up to now:
A 2018 Pentagon report observed that China had "strategically flooded the global market with rare earths at subsidized prices, driven out competitors and deterred new market entrants."
A Bloomberg report in 2019 indicated that China had drawn up plans to restrict rare earth exports to the U.S., to be executed when necessary, as part of the intensifying trade war.
In June, the Pentagon acknowledged the work of cybersecurity firm Mandiant, a Google subsidiary, which identified a pro-China disinformation campaign that sought to undermine the U.S.-based projects of Lynas and others by mobilizing protests over alleged environmental concerns. See:
https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/dragonbridge-targets-rare-earths-mining-companies
"Neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium may be the metals of the future, but the only window into their pricing comes from expensive proprietary surveys of transactions among Chinese mining and processing businesses. No superannuation fund is going to stump up equity on the basis of that."
John Coyne, head of the Northern Australia Strategic Policy Center states "China is acting outside of the market to maintain its level of control, so any solution for rare earths is too big for any single nation to address, the solution must be through a form of minilateralism," he said, meaning a small grouping of nations that share common strategic interests. "Some markets are not going to jump ship to new suppliers overnight, so I think a smaller group of like-minded countries could invest heavily with equity, knowing that it would take eight years to get the technology right," Coyne argued. But even then, it would be difficult to compete with Chinese rare earth prices.
China plainly sees geopolitical advantage in its lock on the rare-earth sector. However, it also intends to dominate the manufacture of downstream products, including electric vehicles, wind turbines and batteries - which means it will be absorbing a greater portion of worlwide RE metals supply domestically, implying a supply shortage in a few years.
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