China Embargos Rare Earth Exports To Japan 470
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."
Not quite that clear cut, but important nonetheles (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Informative)
You'd be shocked over the amount of wars fought over 'special dirt', or shiny but worthless metal, or salt. In any case, if China and Japan duke it out, it won't be about dirt, it will be about a century long conflict (which incidentally has had Japan framed up as the villains more often than China) that was never properly resolved after the end of WWII. Kind of how WWII itself was caused by the never properly resolved conflict known as WWI.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Informative)
Dirt, spice, poppies, slaves. We'll pretty much go to war over anything.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Informative)
"And then World War 3 was fought over dirt."
When the U.S. embargoed oil to Japan in July, 1941 it was almost a certainty that war would soon follow.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Informative)
The magnets extend life. The magnets expand consciousness. The magnets are vital to space travel.
Not really over a fisherman (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Informative)
"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 [wikipedia.org]
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:3, Informative)
Or Gundam suits.
Re:what about hard drives? (Score:3, Informative)
Because they're made out of silicon and gold, both of which are plentiful (we have enough gold already mined to last 100 years, if everyone would stop hoarding it in silly attempts to create yet another bubble.)
Re:All this over a fishing boat (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Zen Magnets (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elemental_abundances.svg [wikipedia.org]
According to this chart Nd (neodymium) is about as abundant as Pb (lead) and Zinc (Zn).
When you consider the $'s and effort in northern Canada to mine natural diamonds even though you can create superior diamonds in a lab for cheaper, it puts things in perspective.
Re:All this over a fishing boat (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, the fishing boat rammed the Japanese military boat (there is speculation that elements within China have been putting fishing boat captains up to this in the hope of provoking Japan), so the crime isn't really that the guy was fishing in disputed waters.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Informative)
"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.
Re:For once I am glad... (Score:3, Informative)
You should continue to be worried.
There are a lot of things that *go into* electronics (components, among which ICs are the most profitable) or are used to *make* electronic components but you're right most of the *assembly* doesn't take place in Japan.
Nikon (not just cameras), Hitachi, Fujitsu, Renesas, NEC, Canon (again, not just cameras), Shimadzu, (a few off the top off my head - and I'm tired so I'm leaving off a bunch) most of the companies listed here [semiconjapan.org]. And a lot of them make things *in Japan*.
And then there's the specialty chemical companies.
China does have some dependencies on Japan as well, although admittedly that has shifted a lot the other way.
Re:Knew it (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:All this over a fishing boat (Score:5, Informative)
You forgot the part where the captain of the fishing boat rammed a pair of Japanese coast guard vessels during the altercation which is what led to his arrest. Note that the boat itself and the crew were released promptly. The Japanese currently have the boat captain held while they determine whether or not to formerly charge him in the ramming. IIRC Japanese law gives them ten days to hold him while charges are pending and if they charge him he will be put on trial and run through their justice system just like anyone charged with a crime pretty much anywhere.
China wants Japan to ignore their laws and release the captain. Not so much I think because they care about the captain though. Japan is holding the captain for violating their domestic laws for an act committed in their territorial waters. China is throwing a hissy fit because they also claim the islands near where this occurred and if they concede to Japan's right to try the captain in their courts they are assenting to Japan's claims of sovereignty over the islands in question. Of course it would really be a lot easier to just file an official protest with Japan, the UN and I don't know maybe the ICC protesting blah blah blah Japan's actions and then just carrying on as usual. They can still maintain their claim over the islands and instead of looking childish and irresponsible to the international community they look like a responsible grown up nation.
Personally I'm glad to see China playing their hand so early in the game with this and other recent outbursts as it really gives lie to their whole Peaceful Rise message they try to sell to the rest of the world. Their neighbors and west are finally getting the message that China needs to be taken seriously as a rising power and a rising threat to our interests and not just a cheap place to order walmart crap from.
Cheers,
Josh
Re:Zen Magnets (Score:5, Informative)
You're correct that rare earth elements aren't rare in the cosmic abundance sense. The original name came about because they were first isolated from a mineral only found in a particular mine in Ytterby, Sweden (hence the names of many of them: scandium (from scandanavia), yttrium, terbium, ytterbium, erbium).
The modern "rarity" issue comes in because they all have very similar chemical properties (mostly lanthanides, plus the rest of Group 3 (III-B oldstyle) of the periodic table). They tend to occur together, and because of the similar chemical properties, are difficult to separate. Not quite as difficult as, say, uranium isotopes, but not as trivial as separating lead or zinc from mixed sulfide ores.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Knew it (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org].
Re:Knew it (Score:3, Informative)
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).
Restricting Exports ineffective (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Informative)
You would think so but despite the name they are not rare.
Re:Japan is a dead rock (Score:4, Informative)
...
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.
Not quite. China was as advanced an wealthy a country as any in the world up to about 1800 (and far more advanced than most) - that is until the start of the Industrial Revolution. China did not "wither" until well into the 1800s when direct competition with - an invasion by - the industrializing west destroyed its economy and governmental effectiveness.
Similarly Japan was a wealthy pre-industrial society, and successfully adapted to forced trade with the West (unlike China), shifting to become a successful industrial nation in one generation. Never were they "dirt poor".
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:2, Informative)
"They should be footing the bill for this, not us."
They already are footing the bill. They pay virtually all the expenses for the US military presence in Japan. Why do you think the Japanese public is so upset about it? They also pay most of the expense for the fuel oil used by our Navy in its fleet in the Western Indian Ocean. There was quite a stir in US military circles, when a former government briefly said they weren't going to do it any more.
Japanese are probably not going to re-militarize. They recognize they simply couldn't afford it nor do they have the raw materials necessary to do it (the last time they did this they used iron ore from Manchuria, and oil from Indonesia no longer available to them). They would just fall into the Chinese orbit of influence, with Korea probably soon to follow after that.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:2, Informative)
In any case, if China and Japan duke it out, it won't be about dirt, it will be about a century long conflict (which incidentally has had Japan framed up as the villains more often than China)
Yeah, funny how a massacre with mass murder (in the 100,000's) and rape (in the 10,000's) kind of paints one side as more of a villain.
Re:All this over a fishing boat (Score:2, Informative)
Japan's holding a Chinese fishing captain who was fishing off of waters claimed by both Japan and China.
Let me fix that for you: Japan's holding a Chinese fishing captain whose boat has rammed a Japanese military ship in Japanese waters.
If you want a bit of history about the Daioyu / senkaku islands, here is an an article in the French newspaper "Le Monde" (through google translate [google.com]
Re:Not really over a fisherman (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Please check your facts [wikipedia.org]
The island has never been used. It is claimed by the PRC only since 1971, though it is true that it was known to them for a looooong time.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Informative)
Re:All this over a fishing boat (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Can they do it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:2, Informative)
Re:All this over a fishing boat (Score:1, Informative)
Not as straight forward as it looks.
The timing tells a lot, and many fishermen from China have been fishing in that region for a very long time. For them to be kidnapped at this time is a reflection of political play in Japan. My bets are either with the high-powered civil servants or the LDP trying to capture the initiatives and obstruct the new government in their initiatives.
Imperialism was not extinguished in Japan, unlike in German. On the contrary, they were very much in power but was forced not to show it out in the public. If you visit the deeper part of many shrines in Japan, you shall see their dead soldiers were being worshiped for trying to bring economic goods back to the motherland. It is still an honor for the family that had sons that were killed this way. That parts of shrine still bring in many donors and worshipers year after year. Many in the West were either ignorant of the trouble seeds were intentionally planted like those in the middle east. This is to keep other regions in check (in trouble) - if you are busy with all these fighting, you can't be growing effectively and competing.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Informative)
Ohhhh, they minded their own business for thousands of years before WWII? Really?
You might want to inform the Koreans that they weren't really invaded by Japan in 1592 and part of their country wasn't under Japanese control for years subsequently.
Not confirmed (Score:4, Informative)
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 [english.cri.cn]
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTKB00705420100924 [reuters.com]
There might still be some element of truth to it, but all the reports are getting confusing.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:3, Informative)
I doubt the situation between Japan and China is the Japanese peoples' fault at this point
Hmm, I see. Perhaps you are unaware of the events during the Japanese occupation of China - read up on it, Wikipedia has a several items on this, eg: The Nanjing massacre [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_massacre]. As far as the Chinese goes, they have a lot of very painful memories from WWII, all connected with what Japanese soldiers did in China. The Japanese had a reputation during the war for extreme cruelty - one could almost think they enjoyed doing it. For comparison - German soldiers captured by Britain were treated with some decency in POW camps back in England, and British soldiers captured by the Germans were not too bad off either (as opposed to the Jews in the extermination camps), whereas US and British soldiers captured by the Japanese faced rather different conditions.
The Chinese have many good reasons for hating Japan; it is not all to do with money. Can one blame the current generation of Japanese for what their grand parents did during the war? Perhaps not, but it is hardly any wonder that the Chinese find it distasteful when the Japanese government are totally unapologetic about what happened and still honour some of the war criminals as heroes. No doubt if China and Japan were friendly neighbors, they could easily find a compromise over the division of the water territories, but as you can see, that is exactly where something is missing.
Re:Not a dispute over a fisherman (Score:3, Informative)
Bringing oil from Iran to China involves going through the Straits of Hormuz (with US ships wandering around), past India to the Straits of Malacca (also patrolled by the US) and some other countries like Vietnam with which China is having a dispute regarding islands.
That's why they are interested in extending a gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan to China [atimes.com]