Europe and America lament that it is difficult to diversify the supply chain of rare earth production.

According to The New York Times, Jim Hedrick, a former rare earth expert at the U.S. Geological Survey and now president of American Critical Materials Corporation, believes that even if an ongoing alternative plan is immediately launched, the United States will need five years to摆脱 dependence on China. He pointed out that "China has had a 30-year head start in rare earth production."

Regarding the reasons why rare earth production is concentrated in China, Julie Michelle Klingler, a geographer from the United States and senior visiting scholar at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, noted that "rare earth elements are relatively common in the Earth's crust, but by the late 20th century, there were fewer and fewer places with the energy and regulatory frameworks to carry out low-cost processing and refining. This is why rare earth production shifted from the West to China from the late 20th century to the early 21st century. In the past decade, the United States, Canada, Australia, and many other regions have been making great efforts to restore rare earth mining and processing."

This professor finally pointed out that over the past 15 years, it has been extremely difficult for the global supply chain to diversify, and companies in the United States, Australia, and even Canada have found it hard to start rare earth production and processing. One reason is actually that the global supply has remained quite stable. When new ore deposits or mines are announced to be put into operation, they often actually depress global prices, making the development of more deposits uneconomical. The reality is that, except for a few exceptions, the situation seems somewhat complex. But what follows is a geopolitical issue, which is more like a contest for those so-called rare resources, which are not really rare in essence.

Source: rfi

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1834811469010956/

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