Recently, the United States has launched another round of sanctions against Chinese companies, from tariffs to semiconductors, all aspects want to "grasp" China. Coincidentally, China's Ministry of Commerce issued a statement at this time, banning the export of 24 categories of key technologies, including a new key ban, which will surely make the United States and the West panic.
Rare earth mining in China.
Recently, China's Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology jointly released the latest news, stating that after fully soliciting the opinions of relevant departments and people from all walks of life, China has updated the previous "Catalogue of China's Prohibited Export Restrictions". In the new catalogue, China has banned the export of 24 categories of key technologies, while restricting exports in as many as 110 categories.
In the part of the catalogue that prohibits exports, the Chinese side has added technologies related to the manufacture of magnets, including rare earths. In the part of the export restriction, it is to add rare earth mining, mineral processing and smelting and other related technologies. The Chinese side stresses that the announcement will take effect immediately after its issuance. It is worth noting that the list was last revised in 2020.
Strictly speaking, the "export of technology" by China refers to the transfer of technology from China to overseas through investment, ** and other means. In the document, the Chinese side made it clear that the purpose of implementing these export bans is mainly to safeguard the public interest.
All technologies listed in the catalogue as prohibited for export shall not be exported under any circumstances;For those technologies that are restricted from export, China mainly implements license management, and it is also not allowed to export without a license.
One of the more interesting points is that in the latest catalogue released by the Ministry of Commerce, the column of "non-ferrous metal smelting and rolling processing industry" shows that China will prohibit the export of rare earth extraction and separation process technology, as well as the production technology of rare earth metals and alloy materials.
As we all know, rare earths are known as "industrial**" and are a very important strategic metal. Rare earths are made up of 17 elements and are essential metals for the manufacture of smartphone chips, liquid crystal displays, military equipment and offshore wind turbines. At the same time, it also plays a huge role in emerging industries such as aerospace, new energy, and environmental protection.
Rare earths are essential raw materials for the manufacture of semiconductors.
China is the world's largest producer of rare earths, currently controlling about three-quarters of the world's rare earth production. Over the past 30 years, China has dominated the field of rare earth mining and refining. However, rare earth companies in the United States and the West are "sighing" because of the technical complexity of rare earth refining.
Last year, Chinese authorities raised annual rare-earth mining and separation quotas to 210,000 tonnes and 200,000 tonnes, respectively, according to the U.S. Geological Survey20,000 tons of rare earth oxide equivalent. As of the end of last year, the world's total reserves of rare earths were about 1300 million tons, and China's rare earth reserves have 44 million tons, accounting for one-third of the world's total reserves, more than twice as high as Vietnam, which ranks second.
With China dominating such a critical strategic resource, the United States and the West are naturally anxious. Therefore, in recent years, in order to ensure the security of rare earth resources, the United States and the West have begun to vigorously promote the "de-Chinaization" process of the rare earth ** chain and industrial chain, and want to rebuild a complete rare earth industry chain with the United States and the West as the main body.
In order to break China's "rare earth monopoly" and get rid of dependence on China. In recent years, the United States has been actively looking for countries that can replace China in the field of rare earths. To this end, Biden has successively approached Mongolia, Vietnam and other countries to discuss "countermeasures".
In response, the United States pledged to help these countries mine rare earths and improve their position in the semiconductor chain. To this end, the United States and Mongolia have also reached a so-called "open skies" agreement, which wants to bypass China and Russia to ship rare earths out of Mongolia. Vietnam, on the other hand, prefers to work with China to develop its rare earth resources.
Unmined rare earth mines in Vietnam.
However, at present, China has revised the "Catalogue of Export Prohibitions and Restrictions on Exports", which is equivalent to cutting off the idea of "de-Chinaization" of the rare earth industry chain by the United States and the West from the source. You must know that at the global level, only a few countries have production capacity for the key links in the rare earth industry chain. In the "Five Eyes" alliance, the United States and Australia only have the ability to mine rare earth minerals, while the United Kingdom can only produce rare earthsAmong the EU countries, France barely has the ability to smelt and separate rare earths.
The United States and the West can barely form a complete rare earth industry chain by building various alliances, and its scale and efficiency are much lower than China's. However, China is the only country in the world that has the production capacity of various products in the whole rare earth industry chain, a fact that the United States and the West cannot deny or avoid.
Moreover, both China and the United States and the West are very aware of the reality, that is: the technology of processing rare earths is far more important than the rare earth raw materials themselves. If there is no technology and no raw materials, then this industry can only be discouraged. Therefore, China naturally has to hold such a key technology firmly in its own hands.
As the Chinese proverb often says, "it is better to teach a man to fish than to teach a man to fish", and now we have not only banned "fish" but also banned "fishing" for the protection of rare earths, which is equivalent to telling the United States and the West that it will only backfire if you want to rely on China's resources and technology to exclude China from the first chain and decouple from China.
U.S. ** Biden.
At present, the US sanctions against China have never stopped. Recently, the United States has put dozens of Chinese companies on the so-called "unverified list" in order to suppress Chinese companies by conducting on-site inspections of them. Subsequently, Biden also released news, claiming that the United States is considering raising tariffs on China, and also intends to specifically target China's electric vehicle industry.
In order to curb the development of China's semiconductor industry, the so-called "chip war" of the United States has never stopped, and even began to intensify its efforts to pull in many "allies" such as South Korea and the Netherlands to impose various restrictions on China.
As it turns out, China is not helpless. As early as August this year, in order to maintain the best conditions, China implemented export controls on gallium and germanium. You must know that rare earths, lithium resources, gallium, germanium, etc. are all "three rare minerals" and play a very important role in the semiconductor industry.
The same is true of China's announcement of the rare earth technology ban, which can be regarded as an inappropriate sanction against the United States. What's more, China's move is more to defend ***, but this kind of countermeasure is the key point of the United States. Even if the United States is in a state of confusion, there is no other way.