

China blocks rare earth exports to Japan - siculars
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/business/global/23rare.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

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siculars
All this over the detention of a Chinese fishing vessel in disputed waters.
Anyone who thinks the current situation re. Chinese mining monopoly and I
would also include their manufacturing monopoly is a tenable/acceptable
situation for the US or the rest of world is out of their minds. I often talk
about this and other related issues here and often get some sort of "pro
capitalist" retort along the lines of: That is how capitalism works, duh. They
make stuff cheaper than we can so we buy it from them. Yay capitalism! And to
that I say: Hey gang, I'm pro capitalist as well. Yet I would submit that, in
fact, China is capitalist in the same way that Obamacare makes the US
socialist[1].

Washington loves to regulate and it seems we are in a new golden age of
regulation. Where are the laws that mater? The laws that say we need to have
domestic, or at the very least allied, resources of production for critical
industrial materials? This is a big country. We have lots of resources[2].
Someone is actually gonna tell me that with all our technology we can not dig
holes in the ground cheaper than the Chinese? I realize they have unlimited
near zero cost labor. But we supposedly have technology. Don't we? So it is ok
we ultimately consume these rare earth ingredients brought to us on the backs
of Chinese slave labor? There is so much wrong here it makes me ill.

What happens when the US gets into a real argument with China re. DPRK,
Taiwan, Iran or any of a number of Chinese interests in Africa? All the toys
that we love so much and much of the materiel we need to prosecute our
interests overseas come from China. What kind of Super Power are we then? The
paper tiger kind.

[1] It does not.

[2] Same goes for oil and gas. Make more here, buy less there. And If we don't
have enough oil, make whatever you can run on gas. Oh, that costs money? So?
We are spending a ton of it on "recovery" anyway, so lets do it right.

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10ren
_Despite the name, rare earths are actually fairly common; they are expensive
and seldom mined elsewhere because the processing equipment to separate them
from the ore is expensive and because rare earths almost always occur
naturally in deposits mixed with radioactive thorium and uranium. Processing
runs the risk of radiation leaks [...]_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didymium>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samarium>

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pjy04
Japan also said they found replacements but costs way more to reproduce...
Here comes the trade war

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siculars
They have also been stockpiling. Which is a good buffer, but ultimately only
that. This should be a wakeup call that you can not have sole source
production of critical material under the control of what is nominally your
enemy. Also, national security issues (which I view this as) should not be
subject to cost constraints on the same scale as standard capitalist concerns.

