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중미 희토 류 전쟁 이 조용히 시작 되 었 다.
veröffentlicht : 2021-08-30 Ansichten : 3622
Author Bai Nian
As early as more than 30 years ago, the chief engineer of reform and opening up left a sentence during his southern Tour: "there is oil in the Middle East and rare earths in China".
At that time, the world had just experienced two "oil crises". Countries have deeply realized that oil is no longer just an ordinary energy commodity, but an important tool for oil countries to exert political influence.
The same applies to China. Against the background of the confrontation between China and the United States, we, who have a "monopoly" in the field of rare earths, must also play this trump card.
In fact, China has been quietly selling in the summer of 2021. Since July, in just over a month, China has pushed the world rare earth price up by 30%, hitting the soft rib of the United States.
Of course, the United States vows revenge, and a "resource war" between China and the United States will be inevitable.
In the future, how and what tricks should China play the "rare earth" card? What impact will it have on the pattern of the world rare earth industry?
There are many ways. Let's talk about it in this article.
01
China's rare earth "ace"
Rare earth elements are the general name of 17 rare metal elements in group III of the periodic table, such as lanthanides, scandium and yttrium. The "soil" in rare earth refers to the metal minerals containing these elements, mostly like soil.
In fact, not all rare earths are literally "rare". The percentage content of some rare earth elements in the earth's crust is even higher than that of common metals such as copper and lead.
Rare earth minerals are mostly like "Earth"
However, its value lies in that the distribution of rare earth in the earth's crust is too scattered, and a small amount can be obtained only through multiple processing and refining, which puts forward high requirements for the quality of rare earth minerals. Just like oil, there are many countries with oil reserves in the world, but only the "Gulf oil" in the Middle East can be easily exploited.
Due to the high quality and rich mineral resources, China has an absolute monopoly in the field of rare earth. China's rare earth industry has many world firsts: reserves first, output first and sales first.
At the upstream of the industrial chain, China's rare earth reserves account for about 23% of the world's total reserves. The resources are mainly distributed in Bayan Obo, Inner Mongolia, Weishan, Shandong, Liangshan, Sichuan and seven southern provinces. The Bayan Obo deposit in Inner Mongolia is the largest rare earth deposit in the world.
At the same time, China is the only country in the world that can supply all rare earth elements.
China also leads in rare earth mining. In 2020, our total mining volume will rise to 140000 tons, ranking first in the world.
In the middle reaches of the industrial chain, China reduced the cost of rare earth processing and refining by virtue of extraction technology in the 1990s, reduced the international rare earth price to one quarter of the original, realized a large number of exports of high-purity rare earths, and controlled the international market from then on.
At present, the reason why the United States is so afraid of China in rare earth is because rare earth plays a key role in most high-end scientific and technological products and military equipment. The application fields of rare earth cover high-tech fields such as electronics, communication, energy, automobile, aerospace and so on.
Loma of the United States has complained that the F-35 stealth fighter it is responsible for producing cannot continue production because of the delay in China's rare earth supply. The important effect of rare earth can be seen.
A "F35" fighter needs 417 kilograms of rare earth materials
02
Rare earth confrontation between China and the United States
At first, we didn't make full use of the trump card of "rare earth".
In the first few years of the 21st century, China's rare earth industry was so scattered that it fell into vicious competition. While rare earth "cabbage price" is exported, we pay a great environmental price.
Before 2006, the average export price of China's rare earths was only $10 / kg, which fell to $6 / kg at the lowest point.
Because of the large number of low-cost imports of China's rare earths, the U.S. rare earth leader "Mount pass", which once was in a storm and supplied more than 90% of the world's output, announced the comprehensive closure. Therefore, the United States lost its rare earth production capacity and the rare earth hegemony collapsed.
After the 1990s, China's rare earth market share rose sharply
After the collapse of American competitors, the initiative of rare earths was handed over to China. Therefore, we began to deliberately tighten supply and make full use of our monopoly position.
Since 2007, China has implemented policies such as "export tariff collection" and "export quota restriction" on rare earth products.
In 2009, China issued regulations on rare earth export and Combating Smuggling, and plans to reduce the export quota to 35000 tons per year from 2010 to 2015.
The Diaoyu island dispute between China and Japan in 2010 was the first time that China used "rare earth weapons".
In order to counter Japan's unreasonable behavior, China suspended its rare earth exports to Japan, and its exports to Japan once fell from more than 2000 tons to 200 tons.
One stone provoked thousands of waves. The sharp reduction of China's export quota to Japan led to a surge in international rare earth prices that year. For example, the price of dysprosium oxide rose from 166 US dollars / kg to 1000 US dollars / kg.
Can Japan, which depends on China's rare earth exports, and its ally, the United States, stand idly by while rare earth prices soar? Of course not.
On the one hand, the United States, together with the European Union and Japan, sued China to the WTO, saying that China had violated its trade commitments.
On the other hand, American rare earth related enterprises took advantage of the sharp rise in prices and began to put into production on a large scale.
To their surprise, China suddenly abolished export quota restrictions and high tariffs in 2015, ostensibly complying with WTO regulations, but actually setting off a "price war" and impacting American rare earth enterprises.
American Molly mining company, which just shouted a bet on rare earths, plunged its stock from $79 to 36 cents and its debt was as high as $1.79 billion.
Interestingly, Moli mining was later acquired by a multinational group called mpmo, and one of the shareholders was Shenghe resources from China.
After this war, the United States dare not rashly invest heavily in the rare earth industry. However, in order to get rid of China's restriction on rare earth resources, the United States is still struggling to come up with various countermeasures.
For example, establish strategic rare earth reserves.
By the time of Sino US trade friction in 2018, the United States had stored a total of more than 400 tons of rare earth products. By 2019, the United States has further strengthened its reserves of military related rare earth products.
In addition, the United States has also made frequent advances to countries and regions outside China, providing financial and technical assistance, hoping that they will act as "rare earth thugs".
Greenland, which belongs to Denmark, is one of them.
In 2017, in order to develop tourism, senior officials of the Greenland government hoped that China could build a new airport in Nuuk, the capital. After the talks, then US Defense Secretary Matisse immediately intervened and lobbied the Danish government to stop it.
In April 2021, China invested huge human and material resources to mine the "kuannast mountain" rare earth project, which stalled due to the obstruction of the left-wing political parties in the United States and Greenland.
While preventing China from exerting influence, the United States' covet of Greenland is clear. In 2019, after the US geological survey discovered 1.5 million tons of rare earth minerals in Greenland, trump even shouted the slogan of "acquiring Greenland".
Trump once wanted to "buy" Greenland, which is rich in rare earths
03
America's "rare earth weakness"
However, despite many strategies, the supply of rare earths in the United States is still weak.
Due to the complete bankruptcy of domestic rare earth enterprises, at present, most rare earth ores in the United States, even if mined, have to be transported to China for smelting, resulting in 80% of the rare earth imports of the United States from China.
In 2019, the US Department of defense authorized direct investment in rare earth smelting. At the same time, American and Australian enterprises also tried to cooperate in rare earth production. However, it failed because it lacked the scale of the industrial chain and could not produce economic benefits.
In short, the United States has not been able to break away from our grip in the rare earth industry chain, so it has to often submit to us.
In July 2018, when trump, the king of understanding, carried out the "trade list" with great fanfare, the rare earth products on the list were reluctantly removed.
Because of this reluctance, at the end of 2020, when the election defeat is decided, trump has not forgotten to allocate US $13 million to fund the US rare earth company.
So is the new Biden.
A month after taking office, Biden signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to conduct a 100 day review of the supply chain of four key products, including rare earths.
At the leaders' summit of the "Quartet talks" between the United States, Japan, India and Australia soon, strengthening rare earth cooperation among the four countries has become an important topic.
But is the efforts of the US government really effective?
The self-examination results of the U.S. government show that it will take at least ten years for the United States to achieve self-sufficiency in rare earths. During this period, rare earths will be a trump card for China to counter.
04
How should the "rare earth ace" be played in the future?
For us, as in the early 21st century, it is not a long-term plan to seize the global market by relying on low-cost exports.
On the one hand, a large number of exports have seriously reduced China's rare earth reserves.
By 2010, when China began to control rare earth exports, our proven rare earth reserves had decreased from 43 million tons in 1995 to 36 million tons.
Secondly, the massive exploitation has also led to the price of rare earth in China being lower than its due value. Due to the fierce competition among domestic enterprises, China's rare earths had no pricing power in the world in the past.
Finally, rare earth mining and smelting also bring a great environmental burden.
The separation and smelting process of rare earth requires a large number of chemicals, which will pollute the environment. According to statistics, in only 10 years from 2001 to 2010, it will take 38 billion yuan to control the pollution caused by rare earth mining in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province.
In order to play this card more effectively, China has been integrating rare earth supplies. In addition to controlling exports, in recent years, the Chinese government has been promoting a small number of large enterprises to acquire small and medium-sized mines to form a more favorable monopoly position.
Once the monopoly position is formed, only a few large Chinese enterprises can control the international rare earth supply and output and form "price fluctuation".
"Price fluctuation" means that when foreign rare earth enterprises fall or foreign demand increases, we can reduce production, quickly raise prices and make huge profits.
When high prices attract large-scale investment from foreign enterprises, we will liberalize production and impact the market at low prices, resulting in the loss of foreign investment.
This strategy is not new. In the oil field controlled by OPEC and the iron ore field controlled by the three giants such as vale, major resource countries have been doing so. We just copy the game to the rare earth industry.
China has actually formed "six rare earth groups"
In addition, we not only produce by ourselves, but also continue to expand the import of rare earth raw materials, acquire foreign mines and compete with the United States for global resources.
In 2018, China imported 70000 tons of rare earth, becoming a net importer of rare earth concentrate, and energy storage rebounded. In 2019, China imported 23000 tons of rare earth metal raw ore, with a year-on-year increase of 64.28%.
The United States has been trying to achieve rare earth independence by other countries, and we must take the lead in controlling high-quality mineral sources in Africa, Latin America and other places, so that the United States has nowhere to stay.
But the most important thing is that China's "rare earth brand" has to catch the bus of industrial upgrading and scientific and technological upgrading.
Although China has the largest number of patents in the field of rare earth, accounting for even 58%, the patent quality of middle and downstream applications is still lacking.
In the value chain of rare earth products, the value ratio of rare earth concentrate, separation products, new materials and devices is about 1:10:100:1000. Therefore, the real value of rare earth is reflected in terminal application.
Only when our rare earth enterprises create competitive and high value-added middle and downstream products can we say that China's rare earth industry completely beats the United States and controls the world.
For example, with the global transformation of new energy, the development of "permanent magnet materials" and "permanent magnet motors" using rare earth metals has become a key project. The latter can be applied to a wide range of fields such as new energy vehicles, wind power and household appliances.
In recent years, the Chinese government has taken the lead in investing heavily in downstream new energy vehicles and power generation, attracting many rare earth enterprises to tackle key technical problems. At present, in the field of "rare earth permanent magnet" with high added value, China's leading enterprises have successfully broken through the western scientific and technological blockade.
Chinese enterprises catch up with the United States in the number of patents for "rare earth permanent magnet"
In the context of the sharp rise in rare earth prices this summer, the share prices of relevant enterprises manufacturing high-end rare earth materials in the stock market generally rose by more than 50%, indicating China's success in this key field.
The US government has said above that it will take ten years to establish a self-sufficient rare earth industry.
However, Americans ignore that while they move forward, the Chinese are not standing and waiting to die, but running faster than them.
In this century's competition on rare earths, China is far ahead. In the future, we will speed up and lead forever
Author: IPO Jianghu
Link: https://xueqiu.com/3783409542/194547366
Source: Snowball
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