China’s monopoly on rare earths has been one of the hottest topics in international geopolitics for years, and the heavy reliance of the United States and its allies on the Chinese rare earths chain is considered a huge strategic hazard. President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure legislation unveiled last month proposes allocating $15 billion for a number of demonstration R&D projects in rare earth element separation, electric vehicles, quantum computing and more.
On the other hand, however, government statistics show that China’s control of key rare resources extends well beyond rare earths, with at least 22 other critical minerals at risk of Chinese domination.
As demand for rare metals in the world’s major economies has soared in recent years in areas such as high technology, defense and clean energy, the United States and its allies have developed strategic lists of related critical minerals, with rare earths only one of 35 critical mineral resources listed in the list released by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
According to the United States Geological Survey (or USGS), China is the largest supplier of 12 critical minerals in addition to rare earths, and China is either a monopoly or the largest producer of 10 other minerals.
In contrast, there is only one key resource in this list that the U.S. clearly dominates.
While rare earths have been the focus of much attention for their unique strategic value, this term, based on discoveries made in the 18th century, refers to only one of the many rare resources needed by the modern economy. A study last year by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC), the European Union’s science and technology service, found that rare earth elements account for only three of the 16 key minerals needed to produce a Rafale fighter jet. None of the six rare minerals needed for the engine belonged to one of the seventeen rare earth elements. Of the eleven major systems, only two of them use rare earths.
James Kennedy, president of ThREE Consulting, a rare metals consulting firm, said the initial reports of Chinese manipulation of the rare earths chain led to years of public attention focused on rare earth elements in the issue of China’s control of a key resource. Kennedy told Voice of America, “We’re so obsessed with rare earths that we forget there are about 20 other minerals that are just as important.”
The International Energy Agency, based in Paris, France, warned this Wednesday that demand for key minerals necessary for clean energy technologies will increase dramatically in the coming decades as countries step up measures to combat climate change, yet at the same time these key resources are highly concentrated in a handful of countries. This high concentration is even more acute in the refining sector, where China has “strong influence in all areas,” the World Energy Outlook special report said.
China’s monopoly
Of the 35 key minerals that the U.S. needs to import 100 percent of, 14, only three of which China is not an importer, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s 2016-2019 data.
Government sources and reports from several research institutions also show that China is not only the most influential country in terms of global supply of most key minerals, but that China holds a near-absolute monopoly in some resource markets outside of rare earths.
Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a British raw materials consultancy, reported last year that 86 percent of anodes for electric vehicle batteries are produced in China, while 100 percent of natural graphite anodes are made in China. Upstream in the chain, China is the world’s largest producer of graphene, accounting for 62 percent of global production last year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Germany’s Institute for Strategic Rare Metals says cesium metal is the most electropositive element, and the U.S. previously imported it exclusively from Canada, but in 2019 China Mineral Resources acquired a cesium mine in Manitoba, Canada, from a U.S. company. Information on the official website of Sino Mining Resources shows that the purchase price was only $134.7 million. Cesium is a very scarce mineral, with only three mines in the world producing it, and a report by Kitco Goldcorp, the world’s largest precious metals trader, said China had previously acquired two.
The U.S. and Canada, while both classifying cesium as a key mineral, gave approval in 2019 for U.S. chemical company Cabot to turn over the world’s largest cesium mine.
In addition, examples of China’s monopoly on non-rare earth minerals include 91 percent of U.S. arsenic metal, 81 percent of rolled zirconium, 69 percent of antimony, 70 percent of bismuth from China, and 97 percent of the world’s total production of gallium in 2019, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s 2021 annual report and an Australian government report.
A study by the China Geological Survey says that “combing through the list of key minerals from the U.S., the EU, the U.K. and other countries shows that half or even more than half of their major producers and major import sources are from China.” The 2019 study said the largest supplier of 13 of the 35 U.S. critical minerals is China, which is also the largest producer of 19 critical minerals.
Most of the 77 minerals tracked by the U.S. Geological Survey are dominated by three countries – China, Russia and South Africa – and while Russia is often considered, along with China, to be the largest strategic adversary of the United States and its allies, it does not rank among the top import sources for any of the 35 critical minerals identified by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Allied Critical Minerals List
Countries and regions such as the United States, the European Union, Australia, and Canada rate their critical mineral resources and their respective lists lists, while not identical, are generally similar, with a high degree of strategic agreement on rare metals.
Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada have similar lists of 24, 41 and 31 key minerals, respectively, and rare earths also all account for only one of them. The list published by the EU last year added four species on top of the 2017 list, and this list of a total of 30 mineral species lists heavy rare earths and light rare earths as one category respectively.
China is the largest source of imports of 10 minerals in the EU’s list. In addition, an EU report entitled “Critical Minerals Inventory Study (2020)” says that China is the main global supplier of 29 of the 44 critical minerals for the world, including 13 rare earth elements and 16 non-rare earth rare metals.
Of the 24 critical minerals identified by the Australian government, China is the largest source of imports for 11 minerals, with nine of them accounting for more than 50 percent of the total.
In the UK risky minerals list species, except for rare earths, China is the largest producer of 22 resources and has the largest reserves of 13 minerals.
It is worth noting that these government statistics and reports often do not include minerals owned by China overseas when listing the source countries of imports. For example, the Congo is listed in all reports as the world’s largest producer of cobalt and the largest source of imports for the U.S. and allied countries, the Australian and U.S. governments list the Congo as the largest producer of cobalt, and the European Union reports that the Congo accounts for 68 percent of cobalt imports, but the world’s cobalt products are largely dominated by China.
The International Energy Agency reported this Wednesday that future demand for cobalt could be as much as six to 30 times higher than current demand, based on speculation about the evolution of battery chemistry and climate policy.
A senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Energy Security and Climate Change Program in Washington told Voice of America that in addition to rare earths, the U.S. government actually places a high priority on other key mineral resources, and President Biden ordered a review of key U.S. supply chains in March of this year, which mentioned the inclusion of Rare earths are included in the critical and strategic mineral resources.
She told VOA that the difference between rare earths and so-called critical minerals is that different economies have slightly different concerns about critical minerals due to different resource and industry structures, and there is no uniform definition or list. I also think it’s not just rare earths, there are other there are other minerals and metals that are also important,” she said. But critical minerals depend to some extent on how they are defined, and there is no single definition of that concept.”
The U.S. Department of Energy last week announced $19 million in funding for 13 rare earth elements and critical minerals production projects, and four of the 13 projects are outside of rare earths.
Recent Comments