Julie Klinger on China's rare earth frontiers

Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo

Culture, China News, Hangzhou, Chinese, International Relations, Chongqing, Beijing, Sichuan, Currentaffairs, China, Politics, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, China Economy, News, China Politics, Business, Film, Shenzhen

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2021

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Julie Klinger, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware’s Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, about rare earths — a family of 17 elements that are essential to the function of modern industry and are indispensable in everyday technology. Julie debunks many of the myths surrounding China and rare earths, and lays out her ideas about why, despite the relative ubiquity of mineable rare earth deposits, China has dominated production of these vitally important minerals for decades.

3:00: Debunking conventional wisdom on China and rare earths

9:55: What are rare earths and how important are they

21:30: How China’s near-monopoly on rare earths came to be

32:49: Mining and environmental degradation

45:32: China’s decision to slow down rare earth production and its consequences

Recommendations:

Julie: Going outside for the sake of going outside, and The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life, by Jamie Lorimer.

Kaiser: “The chip choke point,” by Tim De Chant, in The Wire China (listen to the article on China Stories).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Cynica podcast,
0:10.6	with the discussion of current affairs in China,
0:12.5	produced in partnership with SubChina.
0:14.5	SubChina is the best way to keep on top of all the news out of China,
0:17.2	especially if you subscribe to our daily email newsletter,
0:20.1	SubChina Access, or
0:21.2	check out SubChina.com for the original reported stories, op-eds, great regular columns,
0:26.3	and our growing range of videos and podcasts. It's a feast of business, political, and cultural
0:31.6	news about a nation that is reshaping the world. I'm Kaiser Guo, coming to you today from my home
0:36.3	in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
0:38.5	We all know about rare earths, right? There are these elements that are, you know, vitally necessary
0:42.8	to the function of modern technological society, but they're terribly scarce, right? I mean,
0:47.8	it's right there in the name. And somehow by some cruel throw of the loaded geological dye
0:53.1	or fate's capricious stacking of the global mineral distribution card deck,
0:56.9	all the rare earths wound up in China,
0:59.4	and under China's control, controlled by the CCP,
1:02.6	and now Beijing has the world by the throat,
1:05.2	and it has this near total monopoly,
1:07.5	and just think what would happen if they decided to cut the rest of the world off
1:09.9	from these strategically critical medals.
1:12.2	Well, even if you recognize that this admittedly somewhat caricatured version of the conventional
1:16.0	wisdom gets a lot wrong, I'm betting there's still a whole ton you do not know about
	...

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