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Amid Tension, China Blocks Rare Earth Exports to Japan
New York Times ^ | September 22, 2010 | Keith Bradsher

Posted on 09/22/2010 9:57:41 PM PDT by lbryce

Sharply raising the stakes in a dispute over Japan’s detention of a Chinese fishing trawler captain, the Chinese government has placed a trade embargo on all exports to Japan of a crucial category of minerals used in products like hybrid cars, wind turbines and guided missiles.

Chinese customs officials are halting all shipments to Japan of so-called rare earth elements, industry officials said on Thursday morning.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao personally called for Japan’s release of the captain, who was detained after his vessel collided with two Japanese coast guard vessels about 40 minutes apart as he tried to fish in waters controlled by Japan but long claimed by China. Mr. Wen threatened unspecified further actions if Japan did not comply.

A Chinese commerce ministry official declined on Thursday to discuss the country’s trade policy on rare earths, saying only that Mr. Wen’s comments remained the Chinese government’s position.

China mines 93 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals, and more than 99 percent of the world’s supply of some of the most prized rare earths, which sell for several hundred dollars a pound.

Dudley Kingsnorth, the executive director of the Industrial Minerals Company of Australia, a rare earth consulting company, said that several executives in the rare earths industry had already expressed worries to him about the export ban. The executives have been told that the initial ban lasts through the end of the month, and that the Chinese government will reassess then whether to extend the ban if the fishing captain still has not been released, Mr. Kingsnorth said.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; japan; metal; rareearth; rareearths; ree; senkaku
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To: lbryce

No Neodymium for Nippon!


21 posted on 09/22/2010 11:56:42 PM PDT by rfp1234
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To: lbryce

No Neodymium for Nippon!


22 posted on 09/22/2010 11:56:46 PM PDT by rfp1234
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To: lbryce

I guess Japan will have to stop making hybrid cars and wind turbines.

Dang.


23 posted on 09/23/2010 12:01:52 AM PDT by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide (REPEAL OR REBEL! -- Islam Delenda Est! -- I Want Constantinople Back. -- Rumble thee forth.)
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To: rfp1234

No Terbium for Turbines?


24 posted on 09/23/2010 12:03:55 AM PDT by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide (REPEAL OR REBEL! -- Islam Delenda Est! -- I Want Constantinople Back. -- Rumble thee forth.)
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To: lbryce

Well...that ought to wilt their rice noodles.


25 posted on 09/23/2010 12:08:55 AM PDT by WKUHilltopper (Fix bayonets!)
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To: lbryce
Deep Purple

I'm sure you meant "Get ready, 'cause here I come.."

26 posted on 09/23/2010 12:10:11 AM PDT by VanShuyten ("a shadow...draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence.")
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To: PGR88

If they want to play that game, Japan can block imports of ALL Chinese foodstuffs and plastic knickknacks, most of which are garbage or cheap trash, respectively. Nobody in Japan is going to starve to death for lack of cheap frozen food and no Japanese house is going to collapse without their Chinese made dustpan.

Further, China still receives a huge amount of development aid (US $532.5 million as recently as 2007) and wouldn’t the Chinese squawk if Tokyo were to turn off THAT pipeline.

Actually, that’s something that should have been done a long time ago. If China is rich enough to launch manned spacecraft and build a continuously expanding and aggressive navy, they do not need Japan’s money to fund their infrastructure projects.

Tokyo needs to buckle down on this one. Any softening of their position will be seen as weakness in Beijing and will just prompt further incursions.


27 posted on 09/23/2010 12:47:21 AM PDT by Ronin (If it were not so gruesomely malevolent, Islam would just be silly.)
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To: SatinDoll

There will be no such thing as an “Asian War”.

If war breaks out between any of the principal players in Asia: China, India, Korea, Japan and Australia, it will be World War III, and the US will inevitably get sucked into it.


28 posted on 09/23/2010 1:42:20 AM PDT by James C. Bennett
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To: UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide

The Japanese lose money on each hybrid, and I doubt the wind turbine industry is a typical government sponsored mis allocation of investment.

So, the Chinks are doing the Japs a favor!

( Besides, it just means the bribe price went up a bit and China becomes a bit more corrupt, or free of central government dictates. )


29 posted on 09/23/2010 1:56:26 AM PDT by Leisler ("Over time they create a legal system that plunders and a moral code that glorifies it." F. Bastiat)
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To: lbryce

The world’s largest deposit of rare earths is in the US... closed by Clinton... now nature study area or some such.


30 posted on 09/23/2010 3:05:43 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine .. now it is your turn..)
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To: mamelukesabre; All
"...remember what led up to the bombing of pearl harbor? is was americans unwilling to allow japanese access to raw materials...energy to be specific..."

I disagree with the point of this statement. Your statements sounds like the embargo on business with the Japanese in the Thirties was in a vacuum, just because the USA was racist and picking on the poor undeserving Japanese. It wasn't.

It was because Japan invaded an ostensible ally of ours and was brutally occupying Manchuria, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians (Nanking) spreading into China and finally, when it entered French Indochina, the US did what it SHOULD have done, slapped an embargo on various strategic materials.

What is going on here is a territorial issue where the aggressor (CHINA) does not have a legal claim to the areas it was forcibly attempting to fish in, even though it feels like it has a historical claim. It was doing this to provoke an issue, to give it an excuse to tighten the screws because it CAN. Then the aggressor (CHINA) slaps a punitive embargo on the country defending itself (JAPAN) and its legally verified interests. (The rest of the world RECOGNIZES Japan's claim to the waters, not China's)

Note that I don't disagree with your end result, it is the invoking of America as the CAUSE of Pearl Harbor, when in actuality, it was the JAPANESE who CAUSED Pearl Harbor, both in lead-up and in deed.

But again, you are right. Anyone who thought the Communists would behave any differently (because they wore the mask of capitalism in order to make money) was deluding themselves. They are Communists, and they are all about tyranny and naked power.

This is what makes the pathetic, slobbering Communist China admirers like Thomas Friedman particularly offensive to me.

31 posted on 09/23/2010 4:10:51 AM PDT by rlmorel (Puritianism is the fear someone is having fun. Liberalism is the fear someone is making money...)
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To: steel_resolve
They have our debt...
And our jobs...
And our tax paying Manufacturing plants...
And we have some plastic junk.
What would you rather have?
32 posted on 09/23/2010 4:21:04 AM PDT by Colvin (Proud Owner '66 Binder PU, '66 Binder Travelall,)
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To: PGR88

China owns the rights to 96% of the entire planet’s rare mineral mines. Sure, there are others places to mine them, but damn few.

I was wondering how long it was going to take them to pull the rare earth carrot; turns out it was much, much sooner than I expected.


33 posted on 09/23/2010 4:31:41 AM PDT by snowrip (Liberal? You are a socialist idiot with no rational argument.)
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To: snowrip

Ditto, they played this card in a rather low importance scenario. The Chinese must not play poker.


34 posted on 09/23/2010 5:00:46 AM PDT by glorgau
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To: glorgau; snowrip

I think they wanted the world to see they had the card...

Like the old west gunfighter who carries the nickle plated six shooter with pearl grips. Those embelishments don’t make the gun draw faster or shoot straighter... they just say “See My Gun”


35 posted on 09/23/2010 5:16:12 AM PDT by lack-of-trust
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To: snowrip
Talk about using an atom bomb to kill a fly. The analogy is not quite symmetrical, congruent but it does illustrate the dismay in which, as you've expressed so very well, the carrot was pulled so very early in the game so very clumsily, I might add.
36 posted on 09/23/2010 5:16:30 AM PDT by lbryce (Obama Notwithstanding, America's Best Days Are Yet To Be .)
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To: glorgau
Perhaps the Chinese found the criteria they were waiting for had been met, and this incident provided the excuse they were looking for.

Another possibility: the Chinese public is really, really ticked off over this issue, and the powers that be decided they could not afford to underplay the conflict.

37 posted on 09/23/2010 5:23:30 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin (A trillion here, a trillion there, soon you're NOT talking real money)
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To: PIF
You, sir, are correct. There are plenty of "rare earth" deposits in North America, including the one you mentioned. It has been easier to let the Chinese do the dirty, expensive job of refining the ore. Until now.

A half a billion dollars puts that mine back into play. Seems like a very cheap investment in national security to me. Don't count on Hussein to do it. He will be too busy dodging impeachment next year.

38 posted on 09/23/2010 5:33:36 AM PDT by Former Proud Canadian (How do I change my screen name now that we have the most conservative government in the world?)
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To: J Edgar

You are off by a geographic mile.

NAFTA involves only trade with Mexico and Canada.


39 posted on 09/23/2010 5:38:32 AM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. N.C. +12 ..... Greetings Jacques. The revolution is coming)
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To: Fee
... let us restore what use to work called free markets (capitalism bound by sense of nation and morality).

Yep. For a good while now we have lived under corporatism aka fascism where global corporations and finance have an unholy relationship with government.
40 posted on 09/23/2010 5:40:22 AM PDT by algernonpj (He who pays the piper . . .)
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