Conclusion: The REE and the Real Problem
The United States declare trade war against China was a headline dated March 13, 2012 on the German internet news platform N-TV which broached the issue of a newsworthy claim of the US, the EU and Japan against China concerning their restrictive handling
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Conclusion: The REE and the Real Problem
The United States declare trade war against China was a headline dated March 13, 2012 on the German internet news platform N-TV [1] which broached the issue of a newsworthy claim of the US, the EU and Japan against China concerning their restrictive handling of trade with REE, molybdenum and tungsten. This approach was expected as a succession of the WTO claims described in the chapter about China above. It was not as surprising as the headlines might imply. Nevertheless the reporting remained on a top level with known arguments. So there seems to be a real problem concerning the REE. It has also been discussed above that the static range of the REE is in excess of 850 years and subject to a further increase of range as lots of exploration teams show promising results. So this unfolds that there is no physical or geological issue but something else. Still there are mindsets speaking of strategic and unfair plans of the Chinese to lure the west into the trap: China produced REE so cheap that the West had to shut down all its ventures until after closure of the last mine, China increased prices and used its monopolistic position to rule the rest of the world; this or similar remarks have been heard during several discussions which have not been transcribed and are as such not scientifically reliable. China lowered the export quotas which are in place since at least the year 2000. Associated with the continued reduction of quotas, the prices for REE exploded, even though the actual demand did not explode. This can be extracted from the figures elaborated in this work. As such the price volatilities must have had another reason as demand. It also seems clear that China indeed faces extreme environmental problems in conjunction with REE mining but primarily with REE processing. And that processing is not at all trivial is widely known. Mainly the illegal mining seems to be tied to very severe environmental damaging procedures; especially in the areas of HREE mining in Southeast China. But also from Baotou considerable problems are reported by Hilsum [2] and pictures from Google earth show, what Hilsum tries to tell. So it should be in everybody’s interest to solve the environmental problems as soon as possible. This is what China is doing, or what it pretends to do—as others would call it. These reports of the ‘dirty secrets of REE mining’ [4] got V. Zepf, Rare Earth Elements, Springer Theses, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-35458-8_8, Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
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8 Conclusion: The REE and the Real Problem
considerable media attention and the accusations persist. The problems addressed are however not per se associated with the REEs, instead they belong primarily (probably—another informational dilemma) to the illegal and unprofessional mining and processing associated in this case with the REE. So the headline and perception seems wrong that the REE are dirty elements. Under modern technologies the processing might be just as good or bad as any other technique b
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