The worst fears have happened!
As soon as China's export control order on gallium and germanium-related items came into effect, it was torn open by our neighbor, Mongolia.
As the strategic game between the two superpowers, China and the United States, in response to the semiconductor controls imposed by the United States, the Netherlands and Japan, decided to restrict gallium and germanium exports.
Come and be rude!
As extremely important and scarce strategic resources, gallium and germanium are widely used in cutting-edge fields such as satellite communications, solar cells, semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
Among them, gallium is a dilute metal with low melting point and high boiling point, which has the reputation of "the backbone of the electronics industry" and "chip vitamin", and is widely used in 5G communications, radar, solar cells and other fields;
Whereas, germanium is a metal with high purity, high mobility, and high heat resistance, known as chips"Milk powder"It is an important raw material in the fields of military industry, national defense, and high-tech technology.
At present, these two rare metals are listed in the list of 35 critical minerals in the United States and 61 in the list of critical raw materials in the European Union.
China is the world's largest producer of gallium metal and the second largest germanium resource reserves, accounting for about 8% of the world's gallium reserves and more than 95% of the world's output. Germanium reserves account for about 41% of the world's total, and germanium production accounts for about 70% of the world's primary germanium.
While China is enhancing the right to speak on rare earths, the United States is not idle, and is trying to find an alternative chain and build its own chain.
Our neighbor, Mongolia, which is rich in rare earth resources, is seen by Biden as an important partner in reducing dependence on Chinese raw materials.
Mongolia's rare earth reserves are second only to China, accounting for about one-fifth of the world's total, and is expected to become one of the world's largest rare earth exporters.
You must know that the world-renowned "rare earth capital" - Baiyun Obo mining area accounts for more than eighty percent of China's rare earth reserves, and it is near the Sino-Mongolian border!
We have so many rare earths, and there should be a lot of them in Mongolia!
Australian mining companies are said to have found one of the world's largest untapped rare earth mines in the Hotl region of Mongolia's South Gobi province.
The ore resource is quite staggering, at least 27.5 billion tons, of which the amount of rare metals that can be refined is as high as 2.2 million tons!
That's almost enough for ten years of global use!
I don't know whether it was intentional or deliberate, but on the second day of the ban, Mongolian Prime Minister Oyun Erden arrived in Washington and officially started his visit to the United States, which is the second visit by a Mongolian prime minister to the United States after a lapse of five years.
King Xiang has a dream, and the goddess has a heart!
Oyun Err bluntly said that the United States is Mongolia's "important third strategic neighbor" and that the two countries will deepen cooperation in rare earth mining, which has already begun.
The United States still attaches great importance to the Mongolian prime minister's visit to the United States
Oyun Erden was invited to the Pentagon to review the guard of honor, and he was the first Mongolian prime minister to be received by the Pentagon.
He attended a White House press conference with U.S. Deputy Secretary Harris, at which he praised "Mongolia as a reliable democracy and friend of the United States, and the partnership between the United States and Mongolia will help ensure prosperity and stability in the region......”
Oyun Erden was also flattered, and "couldn't stop expressing his gratitude to the United States in English, saying that he was proud that the Americans regarded Mongolia as an oasis of democracy, and that the United States was not only Mongolia's strategic third neighbor, but also Mongolia's democratic North Star ......."”
I am worthy of graduating from Harvard, I speak English really well, and I want the Mongolian people to learn English together.
Mongolia legislated in July that English is the first foreign language in Mongolia's basic education, and it is reported that one of the important contents of Oyun Erden's visit to the United States is that the United States will help Mongolia train 1,000 English teachers.
Does the United States have the technology to mine rare earths in Mongolia?
The United States was once the world's largest producer of rare earths, and before 1980, the United States became the world's largest exporter of rare earths by relying on its local rare earth mineral reserves, and mastered the world's most advanced rare earth production technology at that time.
Later, due to the large degree of pollution and damage to the local environment caused by the production of rare earths, coupled with the influx of rare earths at the price of cabbage into the market in China, the United States used its rare earths as strategic resources to reserve them, and basically no longer mined them, after all, rare earths are non-renewable resources.
Today, after years of planning, the United States has made a lot of progress in rebuilding the rare earth industry chain, and is now the world's second largest producer of rare earths.
Moreover, in the process of rebuilding the first chain of the rare earth industry chain, the United States is not only on its own, but to attract allies and partners to participate, and this kind of economic "horizontal" will make our country face greater challenges.
Mining is a problem, and how to get it out is also a big problem. Mongolia has only two neighbors, one Russia and the other China, and is thoroughly protected by them.
The United States is not a fool, Oyun Erden naturally knows it.
"I'm glad that the U.S. has pledged to support us and our economy — diversify our economy, we're landlocked, but there's no shortage of minerals, and we have huge challenges in transportation and logistics, so we're looking for your support ......," he said
Translated, I have a lot of mines at home, it depends on whether you have a way to transport them out, and of course the assistance is not less!
How these mines will be shipped out, the United States did not say, nor did Mongolia, but the two sides signed a mutual "open skies agreement", that is, the opening of direct flight routes.
Do you want to ship it by air?
No matter how you fly, you have to go through the airspace of China and Russia, and the United States has a falling out with Russia, and it will definitely not work on the excuse, so you can only make this unreasonable demand to China!
Wang Yanan, editor-in-chief of Aviation Knowledge, said that the reason why the United States and Mongolia were able to reach a direct flight agreement should be to obtain a license agreement from China.
Mongolia is obviously a bit inauthentic in doing this, using China's airspace to do rare earth business with the United States, isn't this a betrayal of our country?
There are no eternal friends, no eternal enemies, only eternal interests.
Looking around the world, isn't that what it is?
Interests, the key is interests.
Mongolia wants to sell its rare earths at a good price, in fact, this is understandable, make money!
Isn't Mongolia afraid of our country getting angry?
Fear! 
Mongolia's prime minister warned that if the superpower rivalry boiled over, landlocked countries like Mongolia would surely suffer.
"I fear that the new Cold War will be very different and (more) difficult than the first one," Oyun Erden said. He stressed that "we cannot afford the situation of a new Cold War".
To put it bluntly, Mongolia just wants to make more money, and it does not want to stand between China and the United States, nor does it want China and Russia to have too much influence in Mongolia, and wants to maintain a balanced state.
Mongolian Foreign Minister Battszeg has said that in the context of today's complex international situation, "balance" is the soul of the country's foreign policy.
We hope to maintain a balance between China and Russia, and we also hope to balance China and Russia through a 'third neighbor'.
Although it is understandable, what was done this time was really not authentic.
For China, at present, it should actively participate in the rare earth mining of Mongolia and other countries, as long as China has enough resources, taking advantage of the lack of rare earth smelting and separation capacity in the United States is not strong enough, and win the pricing power and voice of global rare earths as soon as possible.
China is a big country in rare earth resources, production and production, the only country with a complete rare earth industry chain at this stage, and the only country that can smelt and separate all 17 kinds of rare earth elements on a large scale, which is our advantage.
Only in this way can rare earths truly become the "trump card" for our country to cope with the great changes that have not been encountered in the next century, instead of being sold at a cabbage price as in the past, and being made into chips by other countries, and backhanding my country's neck.