Rare strategic metals are scarce and irreplaceable. They are the primary functional materials to support the development of new strategic industries. With the constant innovation of modern scientific skills, the demand for various functional metal materials in shopping malls is on the rise. Especially in the process of skill innovation, some metals which were thought to be of very limited usefulness will have the most important strategic value because of a breakthrough in a serious skill, tin mud recovery.
On the one hand, the development of high-end manufacturing and new industries, especially the frontier science and technology industries, is the necessary raw material for many aspects of national economy, people's livelihood and national security, such as atomic energy, aerospace, semiconductor, special steel, heat-resistant alloys and top weapons. With the advent of the industrial 4.0's, the core components of intelligent robots, high-end chips and other industries will be accelerated. Rare metals such as gallium arsenide and indium phosphide are the primary materials for high-end chips. Large-scale 3D printing of metal materials in high-end manufacturing industry, whether the 3D printer itself or the printed metal equipment, is inseparable from various rare metal materials such as tungsten, titanium and vanadium with excellent mechanical properties.
On the other hand, the demand for strategic metals has also increased rapidly in recent years. As a key element in the high-tech technology industry, many strategic metal capital is still hard to replace. The global demand for metal deposits, especially in the US, Japan and EU economies with relatively prosperous science and technology, presents a rigid feature. It is indicated that the demand for new types of minerals such as gallium and indium will increase by 2-20 times in 2030 compared with 2006, and the global demand for strategic metals will continue to rise in the future.
2. Strategic Planning of Strategic Metal Minerals in International Countries
For a long time, the prosperous western countries, represented by the United States, Japan and Canada, have always regarded the implementation of global capital strategy as the primary component of their overall national strategy, which is organically linked with national political, economic, communication, military and financial policies, and adjusted in time to ensure national economic security in line with changes in domestic and foreign situations.
The United States is the first country in the world to formally establish a national strategic capital reserve. As early as 1939, the United States began to implement the storage of key mineral products. The Strategic Materials Storage Act was drafted to explore and not exploit oil, coal, rare earth and other minerals in the country, and to purchase them at low prices from abroad for a long time. By 1985, there were 63 types and 93 kinds of strategic capital, including oil, uranium, aluminium, antimony, chromium and gold. With its strong military and economic strength, the United States has established a global multi-level, multi-channel strategic capital global equipment guarantee system and a huge strategic capital storage system. Following the change of capital supply and demand situation at home and abroad, the types of capital storage are constantly added, and many cheap global strategic capital are purchased on the occasion. As an island country with extremely scarce mineral resources, Japan actively promotes overseas mineral exploration subsidies, encourages overseas mining and acquires global strategic mineral resources.
Since the beginning of the new century, the international format has changed dramatically. Under the general trend of globalization, capital competition is becoming increasingly fierce and uncertain. The trend of capital product pan-fund melting is becoming more and more obvious. Capital nationalism is prevalent. The prosperous countries begin to reiterate the necessity of strategic storage. In recent years, the most important countries in the world have raised the development, utilization and maintenance of strategic metals to the most important strategic level. The United States, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, the United Nations Environment Programme and other countries or international organizations have drawn up a list of strategic metals deposit capital.
In July 2009, the "Rare Metals Guarantee Strategy" put forward by the Japanese government described the rare metal industry as "the metal necessary for the sparse stock on the earth, the difficult acquisition of skills and economic factors, the modern industry and the new industry in the future with the skill revolution". Thirty-one mineral deposits (including 47 elements) are put forward as the priority consideration. In June 2010, "Material of vital importance to the EU" stated that tin recovery identified 14 primary metal deposits as "critical raw materials" (including 35 elements). In December 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy promulgated the Key Information Strategy for 2011, which put forward 14 kinds of metals as the key mineral deposits. Competition and competition for strategic metal capital among countries are very fierce.
3. The Great Power Game of Strategic Metal Deposits is Promoting
From the perspective of the distribution and competition format of strategic metal deposit capital, many of the key metal deposits determined by the thriving economies such as the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom are predominant ones in China. According to the annual assessment of mineral capital of the US Geological Survey, antimony, gallium, germanium, graphite, indium, magnesium, manganese and tungsten accounted for 90%, 60%, 68%, 65%, 56%, 70%, 86% and 86% of the world's total output. It can be seen that nearly half of the mineral deposits are the dominant ones in China. Tin slag recovery plays an important role in the development of new strategic industries, and mostly gathers in new economic countries, such as China, Russia and so on. Western countries think that the risk of supply disruption of these minerals is relatively high, so they have received close attention from western countries.
The EU has always relied on China's strategic metals deposits. In the "EIP" of 2012 and the "Horizon 2020" of the EU, the list of key raw materials was clearly marked. These mineral resources were considered "very important to the EU economy" and "high risk in supply", and most of them relied on it.