Depth interpretation of rare earth chain
According to data from China’s General Customs Administration, in May China’s rare-earth exports were “dry brakes”, a 16 per cent decline in the ring. There are signs that the game around the rare earth has begun.
The term ” rare earth ” has been transformed into a star role in trade warfare between China and the United States with the recent wave of bombings in domestic and foreign media. The extent to which the rare earth can make a contribution to China’s counter-American response requires a clean-up of the rare earth chain.
Rare soil is not very rare, but is known as a combination of 17 chemical elements of thallium, thallium and molybdenum, which can be mined around the world; However, why is the United States so cynical about the “remote?” because China is not just a country with rare resources, but also a country with rare resources.
China is currently the world ‘ s largest producer and consumer of rare land, with three main advantages of mineral wealth, advanced smelting and separation technology, and complete industrial chain, and is at the forefront of the world ‘ s rare land industry, which no country can shake.
Of the rare earth compounds and metals imported by the United States last year, 80 per cent came from China; Estonia, France and Japan also exported rare earth products to the United States, but raw minerals also came from China, and other countries would be able to stop their food once Chinese supplies were cut off; as of August 2018, China had accumulated 23,000 more rare earth patent applications than the United States, and processing technologies were already well advanced. If China begins to restrict its exports to the United States of America, the trillions of United States major enterprises that depend on it for their supply will be hit hard.
Rare soil is used extensively in manufacturing, both for the production of consumer electronics such as smart phones and for industrial products such as electric wind turbines, electric cars, medical scanners and even military equipment such as jet engines, satellites and lasers. Depending on mineral-specific differences, rare soil is classified into two categories: light and heavy, which are more strategic, since most military equipment requires heavy rare earth elements.
The United States has imposed multiple tariff sanctions on China since last year, but rare soil has not been included in the tax list, even if it is considering another $300 billion. The fact that the rare earth has been selectively ignored by the United States over and over again is a sign of its impunity for China ‘ s rare earth advantage.
The Mantingpas mine in California, United States, is the only rare earth mine in the United States and one of the few rare earth mines in the world that could become a viable alternative to China.
However, these raw materials have to be sent to China for processing and, as of 1 June, China has further increased tariffs on $60 billion of United States goods that have been subject to additional tariffs, up to 25 per cent, 20 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively, of which 25 per cent of goods include tariffs imposed by China’s customs on the ores of Montinpas by the rare earth metal mine.
Upstream: rare earth ore mining
With 98 per cent of China ‘ s total rare-earth resources distributed among the regions of Inner Mongolia, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Sichuan and Shandong, China has a distribution pattern of North, South, East and West, with a distribution pattern of North and South. The light-earth resources are mainly located in the interior of Mongolia. Heavy earth-type resources are mainly located in southern China, such as Jiangxi, Guangdong and Guangxi.
China is the only country in the world that can supply all 17 rare earth metals, especially heavy ground for military use. Upstream of the country ‘ s rare-earth chain, a market pattern dominated by six large State-owned rare-earth groups has integrated 22 of the country ‘ s 23 rare-earth mines and 54 of the 59 smelting and separation enterprises.
According to the report on rare earth resources issued by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), there was a global total of 120 million tons of rare earth reserves by 2018, 44 million tons in China, or 38 per cent, and about 1 per cent in the United States; China accounted for 41 per cent of the global distribution of scarce resources and the United States for 22 per cent. With the exception of China and the United States, nearly 30 countries around the globe still have rare earth resources. In 2018, global production of rare earth minerals was about 195,000 tons, with China producing 120,000 tons, or 62 per cent.
In the United States, Australia and other countries, such as the United States of America, where there is some medium- and heavy-earth resource, such as the black ore 13 to 35 per cent of the rare earth and the silica ore (35 to 48 per cent of the rare earth), the overall taste is low and difficult to exploit, and even if future mining advances and costs are reduced, the medium- and rare earth elements of their output remain incomplete. China is currently the only country in the world that can produce 17 rare earth elements, and no other country in the world can replace China in the short term in the supply of heavy earth elements.
Middle: Smelting ore processing
The primary ore mined upstream is not immediately industrially produced, but must be processed and converted to rare earth compounds, rare earth oxides, rare earth metals or alloys to be used further for various industrial uses, such as the manufacture of permanent magnetic materials, light materials, rare earth catalysts, etc. China ‘ s rare soil production is about 80-90 per cent of global production and is the world ‘ s largest, with some countries being transported to China for processing, including the only rare land mine in the United States — the primary mine in Mantingpas, California.
As early as the mid-1990s, China ‘ s rare-earth land production was the world ‘ s largest, with 71 per cent of global production last year. To date, China remains the country with the richest and most diverse rare-earth resource reserves, and the country with the largest supply of products, which dominates the global rare-earth market.
Before the 1990s, the Mountingpas mine in California, United States, was the world’s leading rare-earth supplier; but after 1995, China rapidly expanded its share of the rare-earth supply, leapfrogging to the world’s largest supply. Smelting separation products accounted for 14.55 million tons in 2018, representing 85.83 per cent of total global supply, and were the largest smelting-separating countries in the world.
According to the data published in Anteco ‘ s 2017 rare earth report, the average annual demand for rare earth smelting and separation products in the United States between 2015 and 2017 was 12,702 tons. Between January and November 2018, the United States imported a total of 12,000 tons of rare-earth smelting-separating products from China, accounting for 29.3 per cent of China’s exports of all rare-earth smelting products. This shows that United States imports from China accounted for more than 80 per cent of national demand. As a result, the United States is highly dependent on China ‘ s rare-earth smelting chain in the absence of a start to its smelting capacity.
China’s Absolute Leadership
China ‘ s rare-earth industry has been developing steadily and is now well on track as the industrial chain continues to expand and the industrial and product structures have been adjusted. High-purity, single-earth products have reached more than half of the total volume of commodities and are largely adapted and responsive to the needs of domestic and foreign markets. In smelting separation products, rare earth oxides are the main products, including oxidation, oxidation, oxidation, etc.
In the development process, China has established its own significant advantages in the chain of upstream and mid-stream industries, with China taking an absolute lead in rare earth extraction, smelting and separation, such as the highly pure patenting technology, which makes it more difficult objectively to re-establish its own production system, even in areas traditionally dependent on China’s rare earth resources.
China ‘ s share of global production is so high, mainly because of the price wars waged by Chinese enterprises against global enterprises and the later integration of enterprises. China has targeted access to rare earth metals, alloys, magnets and most reprocessings globally, and only one.
U.S. haste.
In contrast to the United States, according to data published by the United States Geological Survey, the United States was 100 per cent dependent on net imports of rare land in 2018. Three United States enterprises are currently planning or are in the process of building rare earth treatment plants, the first one is expected to be operational next year, and the remaining two will not be operational until 2022 at the latest.
The United States now has only one rare earth mine in operation, mining about 50,000 tons of rare earth annually, which needs to be transported to China for processing. In fact, the United States’ focus on rare earth mining rather than on the entire rare earth supply chain has had a negative impact on its national and economic security, as all defence and technology applications begin with rare earth metals or other reprocessings rather than with newly mined ores or oxides.
All rare earth metals, alloys and magnets used by United States defence contractors and technology companies can be traced back to China: They are either directly from China or indirectly procured through Japan or imported by United States alloy and magnet manufacturers.
Faced with China, the United States has begun to take action over the past few weeks in an attempt to move away from the rare-earth single procurement route. The Logistics Bureau of the United States Department of Defense is in the process of contacting suppliers in Malawi, Burundi and elsewhere to seek a diversified supply of rare land.
On 20 last month, the United States Blue Line Corporation and the Australian rare-earth production company Linus announced the signing of a memorandum of cooperation for the establishment of a rare-earth separation plant in Texas. Linus is the world ‘ s largest producer of rare land outside China, with a global share of its supply of rare land of about 12 per cent.
For the United States, it was imperative to create an irreversible production line, which included mining, alloys, separation and post-oxidation complex treatment technologies. However, there is still uncertainty as to whether the United States will be able to find an alternative in a short period of time, or whether it will be able to resume domestic rare earth processing to meet demand.
Downstream: applications of rare earth products
The downstream application of rare earth products includes two main areas: traditional applications and new rare earth material applications.
In terms of the specific use of rare earth, light rare earth elements, such as thorium, thorium and thorium, are the most widely used and the most widely used rare earth elements. Heavy rare earth elements, such as thorium, thorium, thorium and thorium, although in small quantities, are essential additives in the high-tech field.
For example, in the case of “polytium”, all production involving high-tech products such as lasers, nuclear reactors, computer hard drives, and cogeneration engines, which are only available in China and have hardly been found in other countries, must be used. Since China’s leaders visited Jiangxi’s rare earth industry on 20 last month, prices of heavy earth elements have risen significantly, and the price of rare earth elements, “silent”, has soared by 14 per cent as of this month, reaching a new high since June 2015. According to the UBS, the prices of thallium and thallium (the two main rares used to produce magnets) have increased from around $32 per kilogram at the beginning of May to about $42 per kilogram.
The fields of application of new rare earth materials, including rare earth-for-life magnetic material, rare earth-catalytic material, rare earth-storage hydrogen material, rare earth-luminating material, and rare earth-painted material, have shown steady growth in recent years.
Magnetism is the primary downstream application of rare earth. About 26 per cent of the global demand for 120,000 tons of rare earth comes from magnets, followed by alloy smelting and catalysts. More than 60 per cent of the world ‘ s rare earth demand is in China, and more than 40 per cent of the demand is for rare earth-for-life magnetic material. In terms of demand end-of-demand, rare land has a wide range of applications in new and emerging areas such as new energy sources and military engineering.
According to a report submitted by the United States Department of Defense to Congress, about 7 per cent of the world ‘ s rare earth resources are used in the field of defence forces. The area of application in the rare earth-for-life magnetic material industry is very broad and covers consumer-type electronics, electrics, compressors, wind power generation, new energy vehicles, medical devices, car parts, etc.
China ‘ s market share of more than 80 per cent dominates the rare earth magnets industry, and restricting the export of rare earth magnets will force United States and even European automobile manufacturers to buy from Japan, rapidly pushing up prices. Jiangxi Kim Li Yong Magnetic Technology Inc., a Chinese leader visited last month, is a major exporter of rare earth magnets. If those bans were to extend further downstream, they would shock the United States electric automobile industry or hinder its development in the United States.
Summary
At present, China has absolute industrial chain technology and cost advantages in upstream and midstream, but there is still a large gap between high-precision technology applications downstream and developed countries such as America and Japan. The United States was thus struck by a rare earth strike at its downstream application by imposing export restrictions on the upstream and midstream.
The current upstream exploitation of resources, with the United States already using a much larger share of its light and rare earth resources, has already produced a significant amount of mining, and thus has limited lethality to limit the export of light and rare earth, which can be counterproductive to China’s industrial productivity. In the mid-stream, the processing of heavy rare earth elements has created a considerable vacuum in the United States, while China has strong control over heavy rare earth and thus has the capacity to strike at the United States in the field of heavy rare earth applications.
According to United States Government inventory data for 2016-2018, the United States had a reserve of 0.5 tons of thorium, 18 tons of thiram and 25 tons of oxidized thorium, mainly of medium-heavy rare earth elements. In addition, 416 tons of rare earth elements were not specified in the list of rare earth elements to be purchased in 2018, and it could be seen that the United States had a stock of over 400 tons of rare earth elements during friction in Central America in 2018.
In the table showing the share of rare earth metals in downstream applications, the larger share is still in light rare earth elements such as cerium, thorium and, in the case of heavy rare soil, thallium, thallium and thallium, which are just as large as the United States reserves.
In rare earth strategic reserves, the United States already has a reserve of medium and rare earth elements for most downstream applications, but it remains unknown how long it can hold on to these reserves. The impact on the United States of its large reserves and limited impact on rare earth elements, such as heavy earth elements in the United States embargo, may have a greater impact on rare earth elements, such as small stocks but still important applications, but 416 tons of unknown rare earth in the United States remain uncertain. However, it was also noted that even if the information was true, the accumulation was not a long-term solution. If China immediately imposed a rare land embargo on the United States and there was no alternative production base, the United States would still not be able to escape its dependence on China.
In the case of the United States, with all kinds of rare-earth cooperation with China in a “state of peace”, and a smooth supply chain has become a inertia. To date, in an effort to avoid falling into trouble, the United States Government announced six courses of action on 2 June: accelerated research and opening, accelerated deployment of methods for recovery and re-use of the rare-earth, finding alternatives, and decentralization of imports, improved refining, separation and purification processes, etc. In addition to this, the action plan envisages non-traditional methods for extracting rare soil from seawater or coal litter.
In general, in the short term, if measures such as the imposition of high tariffs to limit the processing of United States imported minerals are taken in the absence of the start-up of the United States smelting separation capacity, this could have a greater impact on the United States downstream industry.
While the United States has begun to study the standby options, NDC has also done a great deal in recent days.
Since 10 June, the heads of the relevant departments of the National Commission for Development and Development, the Ministry of Industry and Communications and the Ministry of Natural Resources have conducted a team to study the strategic mineral resources of Mongolia, Jiangxi, Fujian, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Sichuan provinces, with a view to making recommendations on the optimization of the industrial structure, the restructuring of the industrial structure, the protection of resources, green production, intellectual transformation, the development of high-end technologies, the scientific and technological barriers, the integration of the entire industrial chain of resource production and consumption, industrial clustering, international trade, domestic and foreign cooperation, industrial regulation and the accompanying policy measures.
Instead of stalling on the advantages of the current industrial chain, China has chosen to further widen the gap with other countries by optimizing its industrial structure. Why is it that China is confident that it will hurt the United States with its rare soil?
Author Wind direction
I don’t know.
Keep your eyes on the road.
