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."
Lead into Gold (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Japan is a dead rock (Score:3, Interesting)
All this over a fishing boat (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Simple answer (Score:3, Interesting)
Erm and do what? Japan has a reallly really high GDP for a country with such a small landmass that is not particularly rich. What would they base their economy on?
Re:Knew it (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Japan is a dead rock (Score:3, Interesting)
Just pointing out the interesting role reversal here. That is all.
Subsidize mining industry? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Go Fe16N2! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
US sources coming back on line (Score:5, Interesting)
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. [seekingalpha.com])
The Mountain Pass mine is being reopened under new management. [nytimes.com] 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.
Cold War Titanium (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Japan is a dead rock (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly why I think Japan's greatest export isn't DVD players, Lexus IS350's or video games--It's the culture's desire for "Perfection." Everything they make can be done by others...and for far cheaper. The Japanese, however, seek to do it perfectly.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the problem stems from something a bit different than what you say. For one, aggression is relative, i.e. History is written by the victors. Japan tried numerous times to fit in with the "imperialist" nations like Britain, France, ect. They never were really accepted by the western imperialist countries as an equal. The few times they militarily dominated parts of China, western powers swooped in and told them they couldn't create a colony there mostly because the western powers wanted Chinese goods. The Japanese felt screwed over whenever the western powers decided that they should not in fact be allowed to create colonies when the western powers themselves were in Africa and other places creating colonies. Long story short, the Japanese did not care for us westerners much and saw us as an adversary to their acquirement of parts of mainland Asia (Mostly in China). This is part of the motivation for Pearl Harbor as they felt if they tried to conquer Manchuria again they would be opposed by westerners. This being the case, they wanted to wipe out the US naval fleet so we couldnt react quick enough to their invasion. After WWII, imperialism is pretty much dead and I would venture to say the Japanese people are not interested in acquiring any part of China. I doubt the situation between Japan and China is the Japanese peoples' fault at this point. If anything the history between them is used by Chinese people as motivation to hate the Japanese.
DISCLAIMER : There are other current economic reasons for the conflict between Japan and China, but I am addressing the "aggression" part of the parent statement.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:2, Interesting)
If you don't know a lot of Chinese people of an older generation, you probably don't know just how important a part of their daily consciousness, the memory that the Japanese perpetrated genocidal acts against them, not so long ago. This is a cultural thread that is seldom discussed, yet is central to the social and political thought of many Chinese, with regard to Japan.
Re:Knew it (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not really over a fisherman (Score:3, Interesting)
IMO, the 200 mile exclusive zone is stupid when applied to tiny islets. They should have originally defined the exclusive zone as something like the *lesser* of 200 miles or 10 times the distance from the center of any landmass to the shore. That would make arbitrary little rocks that stick up out of the ocean much less likely to generate conflict.
Re: No worries (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Interesting)
for China's military to be 10 times bigger than Japan's, the Japanese military (including reserves) would have to be about 20 million - that's 10 times more than the United States can muster.
But, well trained and well equipped count for a lot (vis. Germany vs Russia).
China would probably have a hell of a job to invade Japan (no chance of air superiority - the Japanese have no small quantity of F-15s, and the US has F-22s there), but anyone attacking China sounds like an equally difficult proposition - the Chinese just have too large an army to make an Overlord-style landing. The only option would be to pack troops into friendly countries bordering China and roll over the border once they were there, or pack them into nearby friendly countries which have countries who could be rolled over between them and China (which is generally a diplomatic faux pas). i.e. Russia is the only possible country in the first category (though I suspect that they wouldn't be up for it), otherwise there's South Korea (and rolling across North Korea would not be easy), Thailand (rolling across any of Laos, Burma & Vietnam - yikes!), India (rolling across Burma - the India-China border just isn't realistic) or Pakistan (cutting a small bit of Tajikistan, or generally rolling across Tajikistan & Kazakhstan).
In conclusion, no-one has any realistic prospect of successfully attacking China.
Of course, China knows this; they also know that right now, no-one has the forces, finances or stomach to start world war 3. In maybe 5 years time, the forces and finances will be less of a problem, and they'd have to rely on merely the lack of stomach for starting a war which will make WW2 look like a playground scrap. Unsurprising, therefore, that they have done this now.
Or it could just be diplomatic posturing (more likely).
Re:No worries (Score:3, Interesting)
"Pseudo capitalism", as used here, is apparently a concept based on the fanciful notion that China is somehow still socialist/communist. It assumes that "big government" is somehow opposed to "free market", and therefor assumes that the combination of the two is some kind of voodoo monstrosity or something.
Artcite's post is basically sound, but it suffers from that ideological prejudice.
Not a dispute over a fisherman (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:All this over a fishing boat (Score:1, Interesting)
And you don't realize all you have said may have been based off claims of Western media who are playing populist cards at home because of all the envies toward China in the western society. No, China does not want "Japan to ignore their laws." They claim Japan have no legal rights to do so at all because the island, which is also claimed by Taiwan which you may consider the enemy of China, does not belong to Japan. Think what would happen if Chinese claims Guam belong to them, sent a vessels to guam, captured an American boat and charged the captain for entering the water illegally.
And if you can read some Chinese, you can find out that the Chinese "hard-liners" are the ones stopping the Chinese people from protesting [sina.com] and that some of those protesting are Hong Kong pro-Democracy activists who have been against the Chinese government most other times. [mingpao.com] And you can guess why the activists are doing that.
And for this particular RE claim, nobody here seems to notice that it has been immediately denied by the Chinese government [sina.com].
Learn more about history, media,and politics, and don't just rely on your mainstream media reports.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:2, Interesting)
I suspect that people usually don't worship such ancestors in public, don't call them heroes and don't call military aggression "an incident".