China May Lose Rare Earth Monopoly

[banjomike]

There are some big known deposits of rare earth out here in the west.
BruSan is correct; extracting it takes massive amounts of acids and water, but ironically, some of the old mining superfund sites, the huge pits with a lake of acid in their bottoms, may be rich with the rare earth elements.

In other cases, old mine tailings are rich with the rare earths. The mines are all played out, but ironically, the waste is now more valuable than the more common metals that came out of them by the ton. Grams of rare earth are as valuable as tons, mostly because they are so incredibly hard to extract and purify.

They all possess qualities that have never been needed by humanity until now, like the ability to carry minute amounts of electricity, temperature stability, magnetic ductility, and other factors. They make micro processing micro.

They aren't rare because they are incredibly scarce; they're rare because they exist in such small particles. The rare earth elements are present in silver, gold, copper, and other deposits, but they're all so small it takes a very heavy vein of them to make the mining worth the effort and cost.

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by legalsea

Of course, China may decide that it would be best to simply take over the little island. Wars have begun over smaller matters.

China would go to war for many reasons, but that isn't one of them.

China is a major player and will be for the foreseeable future, so everyone just needs to get used to the idea.

And if China ends up making the lives of Americans miserable, then consider the Billions of people who have been miserable under US hegemony.

[le roi]

Originally Posted by legalsea

So, if China moved, based presumably on flimsy legal reasoning, to take over the Island of Gems, you would be in favor of the United States interfering to prevent that from happening?


Hmmm. I shall have to think about that. While it would be good for Japan (a nation so far friendly to us) to have Rare Earth elements for us to buy, I'm not so sure about our getting involved in a spat between China and Japan.


Of course, China may not do anything. Yet, they are certainly causing some ruckus in the South China Sea, with their setting international boundaries not recognized by the other countries involved.


As it is, this Island of Gems appears very isolated, and far from Japan.

If anyone other than Japan has a legal claim to the island, it would be the United States.

So China would need to get in line, as they have about as much claim to it as Belarus or Ghana would. (i.e. none whatsoever)

This isn't like some island just off the Chinese coast, where they can pretend that there is some historical relationship; this is in the middle of the pacific and China has absolutely no historic justification for claiming these islands. Japan, on the other hand, has been claiming (and sometimes settling) pacific islands for centuries.

And while China will assert itself strongly among its immediate neighbors, going after some obscure island in the pacific for the sole purpose of maintaining a monopoly over the US/Japan/etc, would strike me as being far more assertive than China typically acts.

[marino760]

Originally Posted by kimchee

Good for Japan! And great that the island isn't part of the South China Seas or we may just have a war on our hands over that island. Let's hope China doesn't pounce and make a play for it like they did the Senkaku islands.

They can't do it without looking like Germany in WWII. The island is on the other side of Japan in the Pacific Ocean, not even questionable. It is farther away from China by a good amount than it is from Japan.