China's rare earth resources face "shrinkage"

China's rare earth accumulated proven industrial reserves ranked first in the world. However, some experts pointed out that due to the indiscriminate sale of rare earth resources, China’s resource advantages are “shrinking”, and we must improve the protection and development system of rare earth resources as soon as possible.

Serious loss of resources

With the progress of rare earth exploration abroad, the share of proven reserves of rare earths in China continues to decline. At present, the industry's more recognized figure is that the world's proven rare earth industrial reserves of about 100 million tons, China is about 52 million tons, still ranking first in the world, but the proportion has dropped from about 70% to more than 50%.

Since the development of rare earth resources in China, it has been rapidly reduced. According to Ma Pengqi, former president of the Baotou Rare Earth Research Institute, Baiyun Obo has discovered a total of 43.50 million tons of rare earth industrial reserves. Since the Baotou Iron and Steel Company was put into production in 1958, the total amount of rare earth resources extracted from the iron ore in Baiyun Obo has reached 12.5 million tons, of which about 2 million tons have been lost during the process of mining, smelting, and storage, and the loss rate is About 15% of the utilization is only about 1.2 million tons, the utilization rate is less than 10%, and the remaining more than 9.3 million tons are all discharged into the tailings dam of Baotou Iron and Steel Group.

The destruction and waste of ion-absorbed rare earth resources in the south are also serious. Jiangxi and other places use the “leaching method” to extract rare earths, which consumes 2,000 to 3,000 tons of ionic rare earth ore per ton of oxide. Due to the relatively high prices of rare earths in previous years, the phenomenon of unlicensed exploitation, cross-border exploitation and indiscriminate mining in some areas is very serious. Experts said that in accordance with the current level of exploitation, in another 50 years, China will become a small country from a big resource of rare earth resources.

The large increase in exports has also exacerbated the loss of rare earth resources in China. According to statistics from the National Development and Reform Commission, China produced 119,000 tons of rare earth mineral products in 2005, accounting for more than 96% of the world's total output. Last year, China exported a total of 55,300 tons of rare earth metals, materials, and devices to the upper and middle reaches, an increase of 11.43% over the previous year. In addition, overseas companies set up factories in China on a large scale in recent years. Some companies purchase rare earth raw materials or primary products and then ship them to foreign countries after a little processing.

In sharp contrast to this, the United States is the second largest country in terms of rare earth reserves, but its largest rare earth mine is currently sealed and the molybdenum company is still basically stopping production. Instead, it imports large quantities of rare earth products from China every year. warehouse. Japan has been importing a large amount of primary rare earth raw materials from China for many years, and its trade volume has been maintained at more than 100 million U.S. dollars.

Industry is facing consolidation

At present, apart from the rare earth enterprises established by the state, there are still many local and private enterprises in China. The division is serious, the industry concentration is low, the business scale is small, and the market order is disorderly.

According to the person in charge of the Rare Earth Office of the National Development and Reform Commission, the production capacity of rare earth primary processing products in China is seriously overcapacity and the deep processing capacity is insufficient. At present, 90% of the world's color TV powder raw materials rely on China's rare earth products. Due to the low level of industrialization in China, only a large amount of rare earth raw materials can be exported, which are processed into color TV powders by Japan and the United States and then sold to China at a high price.

Experts suggest that the state should introduce industrial policies for rare earth industries as soon as possible, improve access thresholds, standardize and guide the development of rare earth industries, and curb the expansion of production of rare earth companies as soon as possible, bringing the rare earth industry to a healthy and stable development track. At the same time, we must change the rare earth scientific research and application of lagging behind the situation, we must pay attention to rare earth research and industrialization promotion work.

In addition, although the call for the formation of rare earth groups in the South and the North has been very high in recent years, little progress has been made. For this reason, the experts appealed that the relevant departments should continue to work hard to resolve the issue of the fate of this rare earth industry in China as quickly as possible.

Export system needs to be reformed

The domestic rare earth industry, which has precious resources, is facing tremendous challenges: On the one hand, rare earth and other industries have created a number of “firsts” in terms of resource reserves, production volume, sales volume, and consumption in the world, and on the other, in absolute markets. Under the advantage, domestic rare metals sold only a "earth price."

In general, a company or country with half the market share should have the right to decide the market price. Why is China's rare earth products having a market share of 80% constrained by people?

At present, China’s rare earths are managed by the Ministry of Land and Resources in the mining industry, and the issuance of export quotas has been attributed to the Ministry of Commerce. There is a great deal of disconnection in management. At the same time, there are more than 100 rare earth enterprises in China, and the rare earth smelting and separating capacity exceeds 200,000 tons. However, the demand for rare earth products in the world is less than 100,000 tons. The oversupply situation has forced domestic enterprises to viciously compete with each other and lower their prices. Most of them export. It is a primary product.

Some experts believe that the methods for allocating rare earth export quotas should be studied and optimized. In addition to sales and additional exports, it is also important to consider the overall scale of a rare earth industry in a region, especially the deep processing and application industries and scale of rare earths. Non-rare earth deep processing, application companies do not distribute the amount. The Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission negotiated the total amount of quotas for each year, and based on the principle of macro-control, it leaned on key regions, key enterprises, environmental compliance enterprises, and high-tech enterprises. Experts also suggested that the scope of export should be determined after the review of new rare earth products each year in order to implement dynamic management of export categories.

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