The Financial Times reports on China's move to shore up its hold on the rare earth mineral market:
China produced 97 per cent of the worldâ??s rare earths last year, and global concerns about that monopoly have peaked in recent weeks, after Japanese traders reported their rare earth shipments were halted during a diplomatic dispute between their country and China.
Thomas Barnett explains why China's gotten a strangle hold on the market:
The world has simply allowed China to achieve its dominant production position by abandoning their own mining efforts. Why? Very expensive and very environmentally damaging.
It's likely impossible, and self-defeating, to become "self sufficient" in rare earths (just as it is impossible to become "energy independent"). That said, 97 percent is a pretty alarming number. But I suspect that the more China thinks of its rare earths market position as a strategic cudgel, the faster it's going to lose that market share as alarmed nations reinvest in extraction of their own resources.
