【China,Struggles,to,Be,a,Rare,Earth,Importer】How to Be a Hero

　　 　　There are great disputes about whether China could become an importer of rare earth or even the net importer of some kinds of rare earth in the next three or four years.
　　Quoting Mark Smith, CEO of Molycorp, foreign media reported that though the output of rare earth in China accounted for over 90% of the whole world. But by 2014-2015, China could become a net importer of some kinds of rare earth.
　　The U.S.-based Molycorp is the largest rare earth manufacturer outside China. It halted its production in the 20th century because of the impact from cheap rare earth from China like its international peers. In recent two years, the drastic increase of rare earth price restarted the production of this plant.
　　But in Chinese experts’ opinions, Mark Smith said that just because he did not know enough about the Chinese market.
　　A famous professor in the application of rare earth in China once said:“I once heard that about two thirds of rare earth in China has been run out. I interpreted this saying as an incomplete understanding of the resource. Foreigners exaggerate the saying by stating that China will rely on the imports of rare earth from foreign countries 20-30 years later. Here I want to tell the rare earth manufacturers and relevant departments to keep a clear mind to prevent the amateurs from blinding the whole country and leading people to believing that the rare earth is almost run out and strict control is needed.”
　　Zeng Tianyuan, member of the Rare Earth Expert Team of the State Coucil, once said that China’s rare earth industry will not be affected even if the United States greatly develops its rare earth industry, the rare earth mine in Australia is truly used and Japan invests in rare earth industry.
　　According to the official statistical data, the output of rare earth products weighed 76.9 thousand tons in 2011, taking 90% of the total global output. In 2011, the quota of imported deoxidized rare earth elements was about 30 thousand tons, but actually the total exports amount was 18.6 thousand tons, leaving 40% of the quota unused.
　　If the annual rare earth output in China can be maintained at around 100 thousand tons. It is quite possible for this country to become a rare earth importer or a net importer of some kinds of rare earth by 2014. But the truth is that the actual output of rare earth in China was much larger than the official statistical data.
　　A source close to the rare earth industry said that the actual output of rare earth in China might surpass 200 thousand tons in 2011. The output uncovered by the official statistical data was made through illegal trade and had no indicative index. Many rare earth mines were run without the license. Some refinery enterprises even have got no qualification of production. Experts blamed small and middle-sized enterprises for the illegal exploitation and refinery.
　　The national policy shows that the central government hopes to increase the industrial concentration as quickly as possible by placing the mines and refineries of rare earth under the control of several big enterprises to improve their say and control power in this field. However, the impulse of expansion of these big enterprises is hard to be controlled even by the policies.
　　By June 2012, the separation capacity of rare earth in major areas of China was 348.1 thousand tons. Among them, the Baotou Steel Rare Earth, Minemetals and other seven large rare earth enterprises in China owned the separation capacity of rare earth of 225.3 thousand tons. These nine enterprises are just the ones the central government supports and will play an important role in the future.
　　Presently the Chinese government is controlling the output of rare earth through indicative plans. But the truth proved that the indicative plans had no good effect after being implemented. Almost no enterprises do as the plan required for all of them produced more rare earth than they are allowed. These indicative plans are a kind of administrative measure of the plan-oriented economy and cannot work well in the rare earth industry.
　　In addition, the Ministry of National Land Resources and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had different indicative plans that conflict with each other. The contradictive plans impaired the control and regulation of the government on this industry. It is known that the Ministry of National Land Resources is responsible for the formulation of index for rare earth mines while the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology takes charge of the separation capacity of rare earth. Since the large rare earth mines are controlled by a few enterprises, the mining products are very hard to get. Enterprises that are given the index of separation capacity do not know where to get these mines and some of them are forced to take illegal mine resources.
　　It can be forecasted that the disseveration between the plan and implementation and the disagreement between government departments will make it impossible to cast real control over the rare earth output before 2015. In that situation, foreign-made rare earth is hard to get into China due to their high prices.

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