Rare Earth Metals: From America's dominance to Chinese hegemony

The recent discovery of rare earth metals in Japanese deep sea proves that rare earth metals are not that rare as their name signifies.

Today’s modern life is impossible without rare earth metals. Rare earth metals are 17 elements including 15 separately presented lanthanides as well as scandium, and yttrium.

These metals are used in manufacturing batteries, vehicles, LCDs, plasma screens, fiber optics, medical imaging, hybrid vehicles, wind turbines, microphones, speakers and other green technology devices. This group of metals is indispensable for high performance optics and lasers and key to the most powerful magnets and superconductors in the world.

Their various applications have given rise to western powers’ fear of Chinese dominance in high technology. China currently has near monopoly in Rare earth metals supply.

  "The Middle East has oil; we have rare earths ... it is of extremely important strategic significance; we must be sure to handle the rare earth issue properly and make the fullest use of our country's advantage in rare earth resources." Deng Xiaoping, a Chinese politician from the late 1970s to the late 1980s.

China is rapidly reducing export quota of rare earth in order to strategically move Chinese manufacturers up the supply chain so that they may sell valuable finished goods to the world rather than lowly raw material.

This presented America with a challenge in keeping its dominant position in high tech but also its hegemony over developed nation, who are in dying need of the elements.

The significance of the metals can be gauged from the fact that many geopolitical experts consider these metals to be the sole reason of U.S. stay in Afghanistan. United States, according to them, wants to make European powers their ally, against China, by controlling the supply of Afghanistan’s rare earth metals.

In 2010, Pentagon estimated Afghanistan’s mineral deposits to be worth 1 trillion $, once mined. The New York Times reported that White House officials are looking at Afghanistan’s mineral resources as compelling reason to extend their stay in the country.

“We live in a different world than the past, where commodity prices mattered because a monopoly allowed sometimes a single nation or a group of nations to charge an extremely high price for that material, and people are still thinking along those lines,” Michael Silver said. “That’s not the world we live in today, particularly with rare-earth metals, which is kind of what got me involved in the Afghanistan situation.” Michael Silver head White House Initiative and CEO of American Element

Critics on the other hand points to the fact that Afghanistan is a war zone moreover; mining and refining these metals from the mountain is costly. Another factor which goes against America is Afghanistan has no coast of its own and the only cost effective route for the metals is through Pakistan’s pushtun belt.