How can CHina catch up with the West when its hands are tied?

bladerunner said:

Offer enough money and engineers from China would emigrate to help out I think the article,is over sensationalised , Australia also has a rare earth site capable of supplying much of what is required by the West Australia is a mining country, no shortage/lack of mining speciallists there..
45% of rare earth deposits lie outside Chinas borders,although China may have a financial interest in them, and if it was to get difficult, the relevant states could forcibly buy Chinas share,. end of problem.

There may be a lag as the world readjusts but in the end I can only see it being a loose loose situation for China, as other countries re evaluate their Willingness to let China acquire ownership or even sell the resources, or transfer technology.

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He is not talking about getting the dirt out of the ground that is the easy part Now you have to refine it and that is normally proprietary process jealously guarded secret. Only few senior engineer know the actual process. In typical consulting engineering company only the owner or most senior person know the process.

Hendrik_2000 said:

He is not talking about getting the dirt out of the ground that is the easy part Now you have to refine it and that is normally proprietary process jealously guarded secret. Only few senior engineer know the actual process. In typical consulting engineering company only the owner or most senior person know the process.

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If you read an earlier article found on another thread an article refers to the West possibly building another refinery, it was only Chinas pricing policy which killed it. The point I'm making here is that there is still refining knowledge in the West eg three are still functioning in America and then theres the one in Singapore, which is unlikely to back China on this one.. THeres the Rhone Poulenc Chime Australia PTY Refinery in Perth. Therefore they should not worry about China, build the refinery while the knowledge is still available.

Heres an extract about the refinery that they were planning in Malaysia, just buy out the Chinese and continue the project

Lynas is also building what was to be the world's largest rare earth refinery in Malaysia. Two Chinese mining companies have now put an end to that threat permanently. Arafura now has a 25% Chinese partner, which is also the majority owner of a new joint venture with Arafura to explore for and develop iron ore resources in Australia.
At the same time CNMC, China Nonferrous Mining company, has made an offer to buy 51% of Lynas and to put up the money to guarantee the construction of Lynas' rare earth refinery in Malaysia. It's not much of a stretch to imagine that in return for the money for the refinery CNMC will get an offtake of the refinery's output from Lynas, and, I would imagine, Arafura, for many years to come.
Chinese company's thus will control shortly an output of Australian rare earth mines that has been projected to reach a total of 40,000 mt a year by 2015. Coincidentally this is the exact amount of the shortfall predicted in Chinese domestic rare earth supply, in order to satisfy Chinese domestic demand, by 2015.
Unless North American mining financiers put MolyCorp's Mountain Pass rare earth mine back into operation, develop Thorium Energy's Lemhi Pass rare earth deposits, and finance the production of rare earths at Canada's Hoidas and Thor Lakes, owned respectively by Great Western Mineral Group and Avalon Rare Metals, then the electrification of vehicles, wind power development, fluid cracking catalysts, and personal and military electronics will all depend on the kindness of the People's Republic of China towards North American industry and its military from now on.
Chinese companies will of course make promises to keep western customers supplied. But China's companies have the same priorities as the Chinese state, so if a demand crunch occurs expect it to be non Chinese customers for rare earths who take the brunt of it."

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Plus theres a few smaller refineries outside of China.
In summary then we have the 3 still operating in America and with the Canadians, Australians, Singapore, Malaysia, in time enough will be refined to counter any shortfall in Chinese supplies. Japan would be more than willing to provide finance, as Im sure they would want to build up a another source of supply, rather than relying on China. Also these refinery's can also be a base for training more skilled staff.

cmb=1968 said:

Does anyone know when Europe or China made it mandatory for Trains to be equipped with Air Breaks?

The reason I asked this question was I found out that it took the US 21 years to make the Air break mandatory on trains when the US passed "the US railroad's safety appliance Act of 1893" and George Westinghouse patented the air break in 1871.

Before the Invention of the Air break a train Break man had to clime atop the train cars, and manually turn a wheal that engaged the Breaks on each car. This job had an outrageous accident rate.

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I would have thought that once a braking system had been developed, and proved superior, it would adopted by all countries, part of the incremental improvement in a product.the Braking or steering system in cars as an eg.