
World faces hi-tech crunch as China eyes ban on rare metal exports - bd
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6082464/World-faces-hi-tech-crunch-as-China-eyes-ban-on-rare-metal-exports.html
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amalcon
Keep in mind that rare earth metals aren't all that rare. They're just named
that because they're similar in certain ways to the "common earth metals".
There are many known deposits, that just aren't profitable. Most locations
simply can't compete with the infamous cheap Chinese labor.

If China stops its exports, there will be a little bit of a shock period and a
modest price increase thereafter, not the end of the world.

~~~
jpcx01
Agreed. Every country has loads of dirt and rock. Just no one wants to dig it
up for slave wages. Once the price is right, we'll be happy to do the work.

~~~
fnid
"slave wages" is not exactly correct. If a chinese worker from the south of
china goes to north china to work for a couple years making shower curtains,
they return home and pay cash for a house.

What you consider slave wages is a lot of money to them. If _you_ went there
and did the work, you'd consider it slave wages, but they consider it _very_
good money.

~~~
electromagnetic
Their cost of living is significantly less in most of China than the Western
costs of living. However Beijing is getting fairly pricey rents now,
approximately $400 per month and it isn't uncommon to see them in the 1000's.
I'd hardly say the chinese workers are paid slave wages when apartments near
me are listed at $600.

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d4nt
I can't quite see this happening, it would trigger all kinds of retaliation
and WTO type wrangling. I suspect China is doing a bit of posturing ahead of
the Copenhagen climate conference.

~~~
coliveira
I don't think what they are trying to do is illegal, because they want to use
the resources for themselves. Nobody can be forced to sell what they need to
use...

~~~
d4nt
I don't mean to suggest it would be illegal. I just think that if they refuse
to sell us these minerals, then we might refuse to sell them BMWs or the video
games... and so on until somebody sees sense.

~~~
cglee
Aren't BMWs German? And no one in China buys video games. They all play online
versions. We could stop selling them Starbucks, McDonald's and Coke I guess.

~~~
warfangle
We (the US, at least) also have to tread carefully around China.

They hold a majority of our government's debt...

~~~
bwhite
This isn't right. China holds between 22-25% of US debt, which is a plurality,
not close to a majority (<http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt>).

China has also indicated that it would prefer to buy less US debt, though it's
unclear if this is posturing or not. Both countries are over each other's
barrels, to mangle the metaphor. If you owe the bank $10,000 and you walk in
and tell them you're struggling, they'll just look at you funny. If you owe
the bank $10,000,000,000 dollars and you walk in and tell them you're
struggling, you better believe they'll want to work with you. The USD makes up
about 65% of foreign reserves (down from about a steady 70-ish% between
2001-2007). China doesn't keep buying USDs for fun. They buy them for profit,
stability, and for preventing the appreciation of the yuan.

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pmorici
Seems like they might be doing this to protect their manufacturing jobs. I
read an article one that said one reason countries like Africa are perpetually
poor even though many of them have a lot of good farm land and natural
resources is because they only export raw goods and materials where as a lot
of the profit is in refining these materials to more finished products. I
believe the example given was peanuts are grown there but they don't
manufacture peanut butter.

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uhjnybt
Alternate headline - world buys magnets cheap from china. Instead of world
buys niobium from china, makes it into expensive magnets and ships magnets to
china to build into stuff.

Anyway I though civilisation was going to collapse because Tantalum was only
available in a couple of war torn African countries?

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c00p3r
China is assembling most of those hi-tech gadgets, so its move is clear to
encourage export of its goods rather than its minerals. Very smart move.

~~~
sho
That's how I read it too. A move in strategy away from exporting raw
materials, to focus on the value added manufactured goods. Regrettable perhaps
but understandable enough. Doubt they'll be able to enforce it though.

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riobard
Easy. Manufacture Prius in China and then export the final cars.

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jerryji
I'm done with all the hatred, parochial, and ignorant comments out there.

Now I turn to HN readers for truth wisdom -- would the future of the US/global
high tech industry really be so adversely affected as the original article
tries to imply?

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quoderat
There are only so many resources on this planet. There are too many of us and
too few of them. They will run out, no matter what many have been trained to
believe. Not soon after, so will we.

~~~
ckinnan
Resources are a function of technology, which in turn is the result of human
ingenuity. There's really no inherent limit, considering the way markets
develop substitutes (higher prices encourage both conservation and
innovation).

After all, man can turn sand into silicon computer chips...it is the
technology and the end use, not the natural resource, that matters.

~~~
quoderat
Most chip fabrication processes require hafnium, gallium arsenide and helium.

Helium will run out in my lifetime. Look it up yourself.

Hafnium is likely to as well.

I'm amazed by the rah-rah capitalism types (not saying you are one of them) on
this site who know so little.

~~~
hughprime
And if hafnium runs out, we'll have a great new business in scraping it off
old chips to put on new ones. The atoms aren't going anywhere.

Helium atoms _are_ going somewhere (up!) but we can always get that in small
from fusion if we really need it. Fusion is easy as long as you don't care
about getting more energy out than you put in.

~~~
quoderat
Over the past few months, I’ve gone from some optimism that we’ll be able to
solve the environmental and climatic problems the world faces to complete
pessimism.

Even if everyone on the planet were on board with the fact that climate change
is real, and it will be disastrous, that soil depletion is happening and is
effectively irreversible, it’d still be a hard slog to change it before mass
death and possible human extinction occur.

But given that half or more of the planet doesn’t believe it, or doesn’t care,
then there is just no chance at all.

So, what to do? Me, I’m going to selfishly enjoy the good times that are left,
and support activities like establishing seed banks and archives of humanity’s
achievements (because we have done some amazing things) in case there is any
resurgence of human life or other intelligent life in the future.

But the hope of humanity even beginning to turn the tide against what’s
coming? Evidence suggests it’ll be impossible. There’s too many us -- far, far
too many of us -- and not enough who care about what’s happening, or even
believe it.

What’s next is a fait accompli.

~~~
davidw
DOOM! GLOOOOOOM!

"Lucky for me I'd been off-planet on vacation at the time of the war. There
wasn't much to do. All the bowling alleys had been wrecked, so I spent most of
my time looking for beer. One day I was out looking for a nice place to build
a city for my children when I spotted a mutant in the forbidden zone. I landed
my vehicle to pursue and destroy this genetic freak before he could warn other
mutants in the underground caves."

This sort of article seems to be what I'd call "reddit bait" in that it brings
out these sorts of fruitless discussions.

