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."
I can see the historians now (Score:5, Funny)
"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."
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, Funny)
Them's fightin' words...
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Funny)
Obligatory Willie Quote:
"It won't last; brothers and sisters are natural enemies. Like Englishmen and Scots, or Welshmen and Scots, or Japanese and Scots, or Scots and other Scots. Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland"
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.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Funny)
Magnetic fields do no work.
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Oh how wrong you are
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_War [wikipedia.org]
Re:I can see the viagra now (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:I can see the viagra now (Score:4, Funny)
Speak for yourself.
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.
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I've tried to parse your post multiple times and it appears to me that you are playing apologist for Japan's actions during WW2 and implying that moral responsibility in part extends beyond Japan and to the west.
Novel, yet dubious position to take. I think your theory will enjoy minimal support from the Chinese, Filipinos and Indonesians who lived through the Asia/Pacific war and its immediate aftermath.
The trigger for Japan's declaration of war on the US was the oil embargo, which US put in place many, man
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Insightful)
I am aware that the Japanese suffered during the war and attacks on Tokyo and usage of the Bomb represent highly controversial issues which will probably never be satisfactorily resolved and I think it is good and important that the controversy of using weapons of mass destruction is aired and looked at from every possible angle even 60+ years later: which conflicts your claim that history is written by the victors because if it was then such dialog would not be occurring.
But make no mistake, the Japanese were the aggressors here and they engaged in a programme of Total War underpinned with fundamentalist self righteous fervor. They could of brokered truce at any time. They could of chosen not to treat civilian populations and POWs with utter contempt. They, unlike the Germans, cannot claim that they were pushed into a corner in denied opportunity of economic prosperity or national self determination by Allied nations; they were completely in the wrong. Millions of people suffered terribly as a consequence of their actions, including themselves.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not supposed to feel sympathy for the Japanese of the 30s and 40s; they were guilty of terrible atrocities, but that war is over now. You're supposed to feel sympathy for the Japanese of 2010, who weren't in charge almost universally weren't even alive for World War II and are not acting particularly imperialist or aggressive.
The point is that most white westerners have similarly barbaric atrocities of imperialism somewhere in their not-too-distant past. Go back far enough and everyone can find an ancestor that murdered a rival warlord's entire tribe; if you believe that what your grandparents' neighbours did should condemn you, we are all guilty!
Eventually we have to forgive, or at least forget, if we're going to live together.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Insightful)
You're supposed to feel sympathy for the Japanese of 2010, who weren't in charge almost universally weren't even alive for World War II and are not acting particularly imperialist or aggressive.
No, just no .. japanese of 2010 may not have undertaken those acts themselves, but that's no excuse for the denialism of history that's taking place in present day japan. When Tojo's granddaughter goes around saying things like:
"Japan did not fight a war of aggression. It fought in self-defense," she said. "Our children have been wrongly taught that their ancestors did evil things, that their country is evil. We need to give these children back their pride and confidence."
without condemnation, that is the responsibility of the japanese of 2010 to correct. This they have not done, which is why the legacy of the years leading up to the end of WW2 continue to plague us. Forgiveness will come in time, but only once the appropriate measures have been taken to atone.
The japanese of 2010 also have to take responsibility for the ongoing apartheid-like racism within their society. Numerous authors have, many of them japanese, have done much work to document this ongoing state and suffice to say that the evidence is quite damning. When the likes of David Suzuki (the well-known naturalist) goes out of his way to co-author of a book on the topic ("The Japan we never knew") then you know things are bad.
The best author on the topic is Yasunori FUKUOKA of Saitama University and many of his papers are available at http://www.kyy.saitama-u.ac.jp/~fukuoka/index.html [saitama-u.ac.jp]. His opinion is not particularly complementary when speaking of the widespread discrimination against those no considered "japanese"
The Japanese government did not respect their rights as foreigners, instead they continued to oppress Korean human rights even after 1952, declaring "post-war democracy" whilst hiding the truth. The Japanese should recognize that not only the Japanese government, but also Japanese individuals should take responsibility for the difficulties imposed on Koreans in Japan.
The largest victims are the Zainichi, but similar oppression was experienced by the likes of the Burakumin and other groups.
Japan, both government and society, really needs to clean up their act before they claim to be victimised.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Insightful)
I've tried to parse your post multiple times and it appears to me that you are playing apologist for Japan's actions during WW2 and implying that moral responsibility in part extends beyond Japan and to the west.
I didn't read it that way. An attempt to explain Japan's motivations is not the same as justifying them, necessarily. Just as one might seek to explain, say, al-Qa'ida's motivations for 9/11 without suggesting that they were justified.
Meanwhile, you may disagree with the explanation presented, but that's another matter.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Insightful)
The "co prosperity sphere" angle sounded fair enough; pity it wasn't the reality. I understand that general mood of the Filipino is not nearly as embittered as the Chinese, particularly around the major cities. What I find interesting is that younger generation Filipinos are as ignorant of WW2 as the younger generation Japanese. My experience is different to yours though, in Leyte for example amongst older generations is that bitterness and animosity is still there.
I am unsure of the aspersions you cast towards the Koreans, yet Japanese appalling behaviour towards civilian population and POWs during the war is well documented. It isn't mere propaganda as you imply.
If you want to make a fair measure of Japan's attitude towards its neighbours, compare Japan's attitude towards OFW workforce and migrant immigration compared to other first world nations. Japan would sooner engage in absurd pursuits like building $300k per unit nursing robots then allow its society be 'watered-down' by Filipino caregivers.
I am no lover of American activity in Philippines. I never comprehended complete and total openness that Philippine society embraced US, given US colonial aspirations and the ugliness of Subic and Angeles (never been to Angeles but its reputation precedes itself). But this is off topic: what is being discussed is the morality of Japan's actions upto and during WW2.
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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 b
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Insightful)
And this current idiocy was triggered by a Chinese fishing boat that rammed a Japanese coastguard ship, and the captain was detained. The islands where this happened have been occupied by Japan for over a century and were never populated by anyone before that. After WWII Japan was forced to give back all the territory it had occupied in Korea and China, and none bothered at the time about these insignificant islands. But about 20 years ago Chinese started wrapping themselves in the flag and calling this a great violation of their sovereignty. An issue that should be settled by low level bureaucrats is over and over again used to tear open the scabs of a war that ended in 1945.
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: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:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Informative)
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For the Chinese the magic words are not "SS and Auschwitz" but "Unit 371 and Harbin". However, today the Chinese are being the aggressors - but only in an economic sense and it's not like they are the first to use the economic leverage they have. What is interesting is that fact that they're using those levers very early on in their ascendancy - which is making everyone else very nervous.
Well, it's not as though they haven't had plenty of examples to learn from, going back to the British Empire if not farther.
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.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Insightful)
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]
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"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]
Which brings into question what constitutes an attack. I think most would agree that a strike at Japan's economy constitutes an attack (albeit not a physical one); this is clearly an attack on Japan's economy - does this mean the US is obligated to defend Japan? Or does that clause only come into effect for physical, military conflicts (in which case all China would need to destroy Japan is restrain from actually attacking them militarily, if that is their goal)?
I don't think this will actually come anywher
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Informative)
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Or Gundam suits.
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"like Pearl Harbor"... Yea that worked out so well for Japan.
This is really going to push a lot of buttons. Good thing is that rare earths are not all that rare just hard to separate. There are large deposits in Mountian Pass California.
The US and other nations stopped mining it because China produced it cheaper... Looks like the price has gone way up. Maybe it is time we stopped depending on China for anything.
Oh and if China decided to wreck the US economy then it wrecks it own. Too much of their wealth i
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not about the captain. It's about the territory. China claims the islands, but Japan controls them. If China can effectively nullify the control then they can take the islands (and the resulting territorial waters). There is a lot of disputed territory in that area. It could get messy.
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.
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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]
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Re:I can see the historians now (Score:4, Insightful)
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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:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Insightful)
You guys are surprisingly lighthearted over this. The chinese control a significant percentage of various rare earth supplies. They're called "rare" for a reason. This embargo is just anther example of the strong arm tactics the chinese government so liberally employs in their bid to extend their power and influence over the world. Currency manipulation is another way they deliberately try to wreck western economies. They're succeeding, too.
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They are not nice people. China is not "free" in any sense of the word.
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As they continue to turn the screws, expect to spend more for just about everything, which will be extra hard since all the jobs are going to china...
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Enjoy your coming third world lifestyle.
Re:I can see the historians now (Score:5, Informative)
You would think so but despite the name they are not rare.
Simple answer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
MacArthur said if we didn't bomb China during the Korean War, we'd just end up fighting in Indochina next. Guess what? Indochina was the French Colonial name for Vietnam. Guess he was right. But seriously though, while nuking China isn't really feasible or productive, outsourcing production and relying too heavily on foreign sources of raw materials are generally bad ideas. Plus, its not like nearly every war in history has been fought over natural resources (to include territory) or anything...
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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?
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Re: No worries (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
And when China becomes disfunctional you won't be able to buy anthing anymore, because every frikkin thing you buy these days is made in China.
Re:No worries (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to ask a specific question about what you said, but I'm pretty much lost from beginning to end. What is "psuedo capitalism" and how does it lead to inflation, depletion of resources, etc.? In what fashion do you predict things will progress? How is the U.S. forcing China to buy it's debt and in what way is that "containing" China? Presumably, if I can understand all that, I'll see how it's a stroke of genius.
Re:No worries (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume what the original poster means by pseudo-capitalism is that there is state control over certain sectors of the economy, and intervention in others (often at the whim of party officials with greased palms). In particular, this means that China has systematically undervalued their currency by ~20-40% against the dollar. This has several effects, the most obvious being that it substantially increases the competitiveness of China's exports (and cost of imports). This benefits a specific group of well connected industries in China, which among others are the mining and dirty manufacturing industries that are depleting China's natural resources and exporting them as quickly as they can. The trade-off domestically however, is that it decreases the buying power of the average worker considerably and leads to inflation. It leads to inflation because to maintain the undervaluation, China's central bank has to intervene in the currency markets and buy dollars to prevent the Yuan from appreciating, which increases the domestic money supply. By having to buy dollars (ie: US treasuries) China is essentially stuck buying huge amounts of US debt as long as it wants to maintain the export edge from having an undervalued currency (which is causing huge domestic pressures within China, there have been quite a few labor riots and urban-rural tension in the past few years). This has two effects on the US: one is that it keeps interest rates low and our debt cheap, the other is that it makes our exports 20-40% more expensive, costing the US at least a million jobs (most estimates are about 1.2m) at present.
So China is stuck with a dilemma: they can't become a first world country until they let their currency float, because their average citizens have reduced buying power. But they can't let their currency float until they have an economy that is sufficiently robust that it doesn't require a 20-40% import tariff/export subsidy (which is what the currency manipulation is doing), which means developing a domestic market under conditions of high inflation (currently ~8%) and high interest rates (currently 5.3%). And they have to do it before resource pressure (particularly food, water and pollution) overcomes economic growth, while funding a large chunk of the US current account deficit in the mean time. If China doesn't manage that, then both the current government and the economy collapses, and China goes through another cycle of regionalism and stagnation (and if China does manage it, we're probably looking at a world war over scarce resources).
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"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.
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I'm tired of waiting for the new Fallout game that does not suck and blow at the same time [nma-fallout.com].
Zen Magnets (Score:4, Funny)
So this is the reason Zen Magnets are out of stock?
Re:Zen Magnets (Score:4, Funny)
I love this quote from the Zen Magnet website. "You'll never put them down for good. Zen Magnets are fun to play with, look good on cute people, go well with deep breaths, and may have health benefits. "
They look good on cute people. The rest of us...sol.
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: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.
Not quite that clear cut, but important nonetheles (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not quite that clear cut, but important nonethe (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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).
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what about hard drives? (Score:2)
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?
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they'll be 5 dollars more expensive.
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I wonder what this will do for hard drive recycling. It can only help put emphasis on advancing SSD drives.
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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.)
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)
Re:Japan is a dead rock (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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. By the 1930's... scant decades away... they became one of the most powerful industrialized countries in the world, creating a war machine that conquered a huge part of the globe in just a few years.
And then we nuked them. They went from world power, to shambles, a conquered country with two radioactive wastes where cities had been. And in less than three decades after that, they became one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced countries on the planet... again... arguably more powerful economically than they were at the hight of their military might.
They did all this... twice... in the span of a single century, with no natural resources to speak of, save one: the Japanese people themselves.
I wouldn't count Japan out just yet.
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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: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".
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"They did all this... twice... in the span of a single century, with no natural resources to speak of, save one: the Japanese people themselves."
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/53050/milton-ezrati/japans-aging-economics [foreignaffairs.com]
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Just pointing out the interesting role reversal here. That is all.
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:All this over a fishing boat (Score:5, Informative)
Re:All this over a fishing boat (Score:4, Informative)
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: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:All this over a fishing boat (Score:5, Insightful)
China itself is a massive country and a few small islands really are not worth their time or effort. The life of the fishing captain is.
The two hundred mile exclusive economic zone is worth more than the life of a fishing captain to the Chinese government. The precedent of getting Japan and its allies to back down on a territorial claim may be even more valuable than that.
The Chinese are notorious for these tactics (Score:4, Insightful)
Japan the US and the EU really should team up to take China to task for all the bullshit its pulling.
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.
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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.
Summary and Article Misleading... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
Typical bad policy (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Can they do it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Can they do it? (Score:5, Informative)
Take that (Score:3, Insightful)
The world should simply accepte that there's a new Master and no longer is called USA.
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.
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.
Thank you China! (Score:3, Insightful)
...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.
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Which would screw over Mexico, since Tequila, one of the main ingredients in a Sunrise, is basically their only legal export.
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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
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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
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].
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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
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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
Re: (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 th
Re:This is a lesson for China's trading partners.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.