China has banned export of rare earths to Japan, a country with no natural resources and historically worried about its dependence on strategic imports.The United States was the main supplier of oil to Japan in the 1930s, and the imposition of an American oil embargo on Japan in 1941 has been cited as the reasons that Japan subsequently occupied Indonesia. Today, once more, many countries are rethinking the idea of world free trade and planning how to secure - when worse comes to worst - their strategic inputs.
12 comments:
From NYT :
"Despite the name, rare earths are actually fairly common; they are expensive and seldom mined elsewhere [than China] because the processing equipment to separate them from the ore is costly and because rare earths almost always occur naturally in deposits mixed with radioactive thorium and uranium.
Processing runs the risk of radiation leaks — a small leak was one reason the last American mine was unable to renew its operating license and closed in 2002 — and disposing of the radioactive thorium is difficult."
In other words, this is a political problem and not a resource crisis at all. Up until now, Japan and the West have been content to let the Chinese take the environmental risks but one can hope that the current embargo will wake the West up. Or maybe not - our environmentalists will not really be happy until we are all living in grass huts again.
K
BTW, the Chinese export ban is (so far at least) symbolic - they don't really want to do anything that costs them business. The "Communist" party (which is not really Communist anymore) currently rests its claim to legitimacy on the prosperity that it has brought. The minute that prosperity is gone, they will have lost "the mandate of heaven" and their hold on power will be gone.
So if you "read the fine print", exports to Japan are being stopped but not exports to HK or Singapore. How hard will it be to re-ship the materials from Singapore to Japan?
Public sentiment is very patriotic and the government has to be seen to be doing something to pressure the Japanese lest they be perceived as not being nationalistic enough. The "blockade" of Japan is purely symbolic. Hopefully the Japanese will soon feel that they have made their point with the Chinese and release the captain and everyone will go back to business as usual.
K
Many environmentalists will support mining rare earths in the United States, because rare earths are necessary for a lot of renewable energy projects. Most of our mainstreams "environmentalists" very much enjoy material (energy) luxuries, and they won't get rid of coal without having a replacement.
T
It appears taht China is not really refusing to sell anything to anybody. But talk about trade discrimination is very sensitive, specially on strategic raw materials.
I've never heard of an environmentalist actively supporting ANY kind of industrial activity - at best they think of them as necessary evils that must be tolerated but be closely regulated. Sort of the way they think of Jews.
No one in their right mind would open a new mine with such potential environmental problems - radiation is like the bogey man. People hear that word and they recoil in fear. To open such a mine is to invite endless lawsuits.
K
"Endless" is the keyword. Environmental damages are not limited by the passing of time. They are also undefined, the fact that it was legal then or it is not regulated now may become meaningless in the future.
Well the crisis appears to be over - the Japanese are going to release the captain. The Chinese reaction was mostly for the wildly nationalistic domestic market and did not gain them points internationally:
Therese Leung, an associate fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, says she thinks the Chinese response in this case was excessive.
"The last thing I'd want to do is to not appear mature and reasonable and ready," Leung said. "And I think that their (China's) response to Japan has not been mature and reasonable."
Now Nixon (among others), who was a wily poker player, believed that it was good for your opponent to think that you are a little crazy, so maybe this was intentional on the Chinese part - "think twice before you mess with the Chinese in the future". But I'm inclined to agree w. Leung - if I were a foreign investor I would feel a little less good today about putting my capital in a place where the public sentiment was so volatile. China has a long history of turning violently against foreigners, even friendly foreigners (alternating with periods when foreign expertise was sought out and admired), but up until now it appeared that was in the past - after this week it's not so clear.
K
Chinese have many good qualities such as hard work, but also tend to suffer irrational, mass hystery attacks. The last one was the Cultural Revolution.
I think this accords with their personal nature - they are generally good natured and slow to boil but when they become angry they become VERY angry.
K
I remember watching amazed a watermelon seller in the street market who was so enraged by the comment of an obnoxious client that he destroyed all his stand.
Paradoxically, the whole effect of l'affair fishing boat will be to push the other Asian countries closer to the US as a counterweight to China, which is not what the Chinese really wanted to get out of this. Of course on the level of crude public opinion (and maybe at higher levels too) what they would like is to push the US out of the region at some point so that the Chinese would have a freer hand to conduct this kind of "diplomacy" on their neighbors. The Chinese perceived that if the Japanese behaved assertively in this case it was only because they felt safe hiding behind the legs of their big Uncle Sam.
What has been completely glossed over in these discussions is the fact that if there are valid Chinese territorial claims to the "islands" (really uninhabited rocks) then it is the "other China" (Taiwan) that has the claim. Of course from the Chinese point of view there is only "one China" but up until now China has not conducted foreign policy on behalf of Taiwan (though they would surely like to, just as they now conduct HK's foreign policy ).
K
Koko say, "Taiwan is on borrowed time. Should not buy any green bananas."
She is auditioning for Hillary's job.
As well as her clothes.
Anon.
Post a Comment