Did China just win the long-game on rare earth metals? How have the Chinese come to dominate the world market? Is there any further extension of the Chinese era to be expected?
Responses and feedbacks that might be answers to these questions were discussed during the recent ERES 2017 conference (http://eres2017.eresconference.eu/)
- The Chinese government at the highest levels implements state sponsored industrial policy, including government funded programs.
- Rare earths (REs) were a top priority for the last 3 Chinese leaders Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Xi Jiping. How many EU political leaders and governments did the same?
- Today China’s value chain spans two cities officially referred to their governments as “rare earth cities” with a combined population of 17 million people.
- This is government sponsored monopoly.
The following foundings were also made,
- Different mining of RE resource is pointless without a corresponding value chain
- Developing a value chain is pointless without first establishing an uninterruptable source of REs
- Small scale value chain production will be subject to China’s large scale efficiencies.
- Developing a value chain is pointless without first establishing an uninterruptable source of REs
- Small scale value chain production will be subject to China’s large scale efficiencies.
The possible reasons of this ongoing and evolving trend were also indicated, identified and mentioned in an interview given to SETIS (Strategic Energy Technologies Information System) in 16/02/2015 ( https://setis.ec.europa.eu/…/chair-of-egs-mineral-resources…)
