US sees China’s monopoly over critical minerals as major challenge: Report

New Delhi, March 18
The US sees China’s dominance of rare earth minerals, which are critical inputs required for electronic products, defence hardware and electric vehicles, as a major challenge. Ironically, senior officials also realise that America itself is responsible for having allowed the technology and production of these critical minerals go into China’s hands.

A report in US news portal Defense One highlights that Washington itself transferred the technology to China in order to avoid the high pollution involved in producing these minerals.

The report cites the US assistant defense secretary for industrial base policy, Mike Cadenazzi, as saying, “After the Cold War, we took our hard-won science and our world-leading investments in technologies. And we said, ‘Here China, why don’t you do this?’ We did because we didn’t want to pollute, and that’s fair. But as a result…we lost two generations of scientists and engineering and business to learn how to go do this better.”

“Instead of developing a way to make it cleaner and better, “we wound up 95 percent dependent on China for rare earths…and as a result, I now have a periodic table of elements on the wall next to my desk that I look at every day,” Cadenazzi said.

He stated that in China, the US faces a strategic competitor that offers a new level of challenge and there was a need to act quickly to close gaps in manufacturing and secure access to critical minerals.

Cadenazzi further highlighted that China accounts for 30 per cent of global manufacturing compared with the USA’s 17 per cent. He also mentioned that China’s overall manufacturing capacity compared to the U.S. is many times more.

He attributed China’s control of many critical minerals as one of the key factors behind this advantage.

China produces about 70 percent of rare earths globally and processes about 90 percent. But the United States has made significant investments into refining and processing minerals, and in October, announced a “framework for mining and processing critical minerals and rare earths” with Australia, the report by Defense One managing editor Jennifer Hlad states.

Other countries are also working to increase production and refinement of critical minerals. Almonty Industries, a company headquartered in Canada, will mark the completion of a new processing plant at a South Korean tungsten mine next week, which the company claims will enable it to fulfil about 40 percent of global tungsten demand outside of China and break the Asian giant’s dominant hold over the global market, the report added.