The failure of the American Mountain Pass rare earth mine, Germany warns that this is a serious situation: China is really getting serious!
As the only operator of a rare earth mine in the United States, Mountain Pass announced in April this year that it would stop exporting rare earth concentrates to China, which means that the last hope of the Pentagon is about to collapse. This is the failure of Western efforts to dig up China's strategy of recruiting rare earth talents, resulting in the ore mined by Mountain Pass having to be sent back to China for smelting and extraction.
European and American companies offered Chinese experts over $5 million in annual salaries, the White House personally intervened to open a talent recruitment green channel, Australia used large sums of money to lure, and Japan even offered shares and dividends, but in this way they managed to attract nearly 47 industry experts. But what was the result? The West still couldn't solve these technical problems.
Because China holds nearly 40,000 technical patents, this is not something that any single expert can handle; it requires integrated and systematic efforts. In addition, the bigger factor is industrial scale, because many rare earths are by-products, you need large-scale aluminum smelting plants, and extract some rare earths along with them, so that the cost is the most cost-effective. Let me ask, which countries in Europe and America can do this?
Deutsche Welle published an article on October 9th stating that China's series of measures show that it is really getting serious, and it seems that this time there will be big trouble. The West has long been unable to overcome the rare earth bottleneck, and the reason behind this is losing the scale of industrialization. China's advantages in the rare earth field go far beyond mineral resources. Data shows that China's rare earth production accounts for about 70% of the world, but more importantly, its smelting and separation capacity exceeds 85%.
Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1845671757364295/
Statement: The article represents the views of the author.