Sounds like u are not following the news. US and the west is aggressively trying to setup rare earth production and processing plant. Rare earth production is not all that technically advanced. its just energy consuming and dirty in terms of pollution. They will just accept those difficulties and produce rare earth anyway. Moreover, they can just offload rare earth refining to a poorer country like India. I would say China has about 5 years before rare-earth leverage is completely gone.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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Consider what China will look like in 5 years time.
1. China's modern military capability will roughly be double what it is today, given observed/probable production rates
2. By then, it should be pretty obvious that China can "rolfstomp" over the First Island China, irrespective of whatever the US can do
3. In semiconductors, DUV machines (economically optimal for 70% of demand) should be well into mass production, and EUV machines (the other 30%) should at least be in pilot production
4. In almost all other tech sectors, foreign imported components should have been replaced by domestic alternatives
5. China will be even more dominant in new sectors such as Solar, Wind, Batteries, electric vehicles, 6G telecoms, etc. We can expect China to have caught up to world-class in biotech and also in the areas of AI where it lags
If there is a time to play the rare-earths card, it is now.
If they're actually aggressively "trying", they'd have at least figured out by now pollution and energy consumption are both related to yield and are infact technological problems, then if they try a bit harder they might discover purity matters too and purity is also a technological problem. Then, if they still want to try, they'd start by investing in education so there are actually people with the know-how to "try" to solve those problems.
All you have now are people calling wishcasting "trying"
It seems your understanding of rare earths is quite superficial.
Let me give you a common example. Gallium often occurs in aluminum-bearing minerals. To extract gallium in large quantities, you must produce large quantities of aluminum. The most fundamental requirement for aluminum production is a large amount of electricity. Therefore, the first step in refining gallium is to build sufficient power plants, which involves infrastructure development. So, are Western countries planning to start with this? And what about the aluminum produced? You haven't forgotten which country consumes the most aluminum in the world!
The United States has been trying to break China's rare earth monopoly for ten years, and today, China's monopoly on heavy rare earths is even more complete. Do you think the US can change the current situation in another five years?
Heavy rare earth refining is not only energy-intensive and polluting, but also requires a lot of refining technology that can't be learned easily. Not to mention, China has the largest proven reserves of heavy rare earths in the world.
Are Western countries willing to invest heavily in the heavy rare earth purification industry chain and risk being dumped by China? Several Western rare earth refining plants have closed down due to persistent losses in recent years. Do you think a lack of profit output is tolerable in a capitalist society?
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
The Western world is fucked! It doesn't matter what they do, they can't compete on a level playing field that they created in the first place. What do I mean? All their complaints about labor disparity around the world that's a disadvantage to them is all their fault in the first place. They're the ones that raped the world. They destroyed other countries' economies in order to make it easier for them to conquer and colonize them. All their victims had to start from zero. That's why there's a labor disparity to their disadvantage. Their plan and their entire economic model was based on the idea of enslaving the world. It's no one's fault but they're own that it didn't work out as they planned. Even their plan to create a Western liberal world order based on human rights and the rule of law is screwing them because they need everything cheap as possible in order to survive since they can't enslave anyone any more.
The West complains about China out bidding them for resources around the world meaning China is willing to pay more for resources than they are willing. That's called their capitalistic principles they claim they stand for. What does it say that they can't compete with cheap China outbidding them for resources where China can make the final product still cheaper than they ever will. It's because the Western system is corrupt and greedy. Look at how China was buying agricultural goods from the US. How is it that when it finally ends up in a store in China, it's cheaper in China than when the same goods reach US grocery stores? It's because from the start in between from when it's put in the ground growing to when it reaches the store, costs are added every step of the way because there has to be a profit for someone in the end. The more different entities involved that are looking for their own personal profit, the more money it costs. If you look at China, you might be able to count the number of different entities involved on the fingers of one hand. In the US and West... you might end up with counting dozens of private entities each looking to see how much money they make. The US hates socialism because it eliminates that system where everyone and sometimes unnecessarily has to make a profit from it. That's why the US is wasteful because a lot of times you don't need all those steps to get the job done and that's where you'll find corruption happening.
Just look at how rare earths production in the US is going. It cost too much for any American company to do it domestically. What's going to happen because someone private has to make a profit? The whole industry will have to be subsidized to where the private individual can make a profit. The US taxpayer will have to eat the difference just so someone private can make money. What does China have to worry about? Nothing. They act like China can't use it's own rare earths supply and the only way China can get anything from it is by selling it to Westerners who are the ones that can only make them useful. Most of the cost to the US taxpayer will be because someone has to make a profit. Just imagine if they eliminated that part. But they can't because they have to stick to their American capitalist principles... but they still going to whine about China's labor advantage...
American citizens are complaining about the price of groceries are going up. Then look at all the agriculture from US farmers that will have to be destroyed because China ain't buying. Most of that soy and corn China buys goes to feed animals that will to go the slaughterhouse so meat can be sold at stores. Americans are complaining about meat prices going up. How come they just can't use all that ag that China was suppose to buy to go feed animals to produce more meat so prices go down? They can't because cheaper meat prices means less profits. There's a point in American capitalism where too cheap means don't bother. Look at how many different entities are involved in producing one thing in the US and each and everyone of them has to make a comfortable profit for themselves. That's why everything cost more in the US and the West. Look at Canada where they were sticking to their guns on a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. But they also wanted to be a part of the Chinese EV supply chain. They're not buying those EVs so they were angling to make profit from Chinese EVs that someone in another country has to pay the added price.
The only way the West is going to get their way is by force. But then that comes with a different kind of risk where they lose their lives. If they weren't afraid of that, they would've resorted to using force already but they ain't because that's how much they're afraid. That's why the West is pretty much screwed by believing everyone has to do it their way by making people do things against their own interests. The only ones that are going to go along with that are the countries that are the same boat as they are...
The West complains about China out bidding them for resources around the world meaning China is willing to pay more for resources than they are willing. That's called their capitalistic principles they claim they stand for. What does it say that they can't compete with cheap China outbidding them for resources where China can make the final product still cheaper than they ever will. It's because the Western system is corrupt and greedy. Look at how China was buying agricultural goods from the US. How is it that when it finally ends up in a store in China, it's cheaper in China than when the same goods reach US grocery stores? It's because from the start in between from when it's put in the ground growing to when it reaches the store, costs are added every step of the way because there has to be a profit for someone in the end. The more different entities involved that are looking for their own personal profit, the more money it costs. If you look at China, you might be able to count the number of different entities involved on the fingers of one hand. In the US and West... you might end up with counting dozens of private entities each looking to see how much money they make. The US hates socialism because it eliminates that system where everyone and sometimes unnecessarily has to make a profit from it. That's why the US is wasteful because a lot of times you don't need all those steps to get the job done and that's where you'll find corruption happening.
Just look at how rare earths production in the US is going. It cost too much for any American company to do it domestically. What's going to happen because someone private has to make a profit? The whole industry will have to be subsidized to where the private individual can make a profit. The US taxpayer will have to eat the difference just so someone private can make money. What does China have to worry about? Nothing. They act like China can't use it's own rare earths supply and the only way China can get anything from it is by selling it to Westerners who are the ones that can only make them useful. Most of the cost to the US taxpayer will be because someone has to make a profit. Just imagine if they eliminated that part. But they can't because they have to stick to their American capitalist principles... but they still going to whine about China's labor advantage...
American citizens are complaining about the price of groceries are going up. Then look at all the agriculture from US farmers that will have to be destroyed because China ain't buying. Most of that soy and corn China buys goes to feed animals that will to go the slaughterhouse so meat can be sold at stores. Americans are complaining about meat prices going up. How come they just can't use all that ag that China was suppose to buy to go feed animals to produce more meat so prices go down? They can't because cheaper meat prices means less profits. There's a point in American capitalism where too cheap means don't bother. Look at how many different entities are involved in producing one thing in the US and each and everyone of them has to make a comfortable profit for themselves. That's why everything cost more in the US and the West. Look at Canada where they were sticking to their guns on a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. But they also wanted to be a part of the Chinese EV supply chain. They're not buying those EVs so they were angling to make profit from Chinese EVs that someone in another country has to pay the added price.
The only way the West is going to get their way is by force. But then that comes with a different kind of risk where they lose their lives. If they weren't afraid of that, they would've resorted to using force already but they ain't because that's how much they're afraid. That's why the West is pretty much screwed by believing everyone has to do it their way by making people do things against their own interests. The only ones that are going to go along with that are the countries that are the same boat as they are...
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They don't need education. They will just pay Chinese existing engineers working in rare earth companies 500K-1 million dollar salaries and those engineers will happily move to US or other countries. Their biggest advantage is extreme wealth.
They also don't need to worry about being efficient about their rare earth production either. They will just pay 10-20 times the current cost if needed to achieve non-chinese production.
you are grossly underestimating the Rare Earth High end magnets..
these are two examples down below.
China has already achieved 6N in processing and refining for rare earth metals. Most countries are in 2N to 3N realm, so there is a big difference between the re magnet that China can produce vs others.
the bad news is, US doesn't have enough/cheap electricity to work on RE supply chain and also huge Ai/data centers build up. they already struggling.
Xi: so many cards in my hand
Yeah, about that, don't you think US first need to convince Chinese American engineers not to move to China first?
I don't know where you live but there are not many people in the world who would "happily move to"
Are you sure US will still have "extreme wealth" if that wealth can't buy anything, things like RE?
But yes they can very much pay 10-20 times the current cost to achieve non-Chinese production, might be a bit difficult selling cars that cost 10x or going to war with China with 1/10th (in practice much less) production.