NEW DELHI—The QUAD nations, the United States, India, Japan, and Australia met for their first leadership-level summit on March 12 and decided to convene a Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group with an aim among other things to convene dialogues on critical technology supply chains.
Critical technology supply chains indispensably rely on rare earth metals, a group of 17 different minerals that are necessary for today’s critical technologies, including the production of smartphones, military sensors and communication systems, missile systems, and electric cars.
“Quad leaders recognize that a free, open, inclusive, and resilient Indo-Pacific requires that critical and emerging technology is governed and operates according to shared interests and values,” the White House said in a summit fact sheet on March 12.
The rare earth metals had earlier taken a center stage in the trade war between the United States and China, which produces more than 80 percent of the rare earth elements. Before the general elections on Sept. 30, former President Donald Trump declared, the United States’ dependence on China for rare earth metals as a national emergency.
A situational white paper on the critical materials rare earth supply chain by the U.S. Department of Energy last year defined rare earth or critical mineral as a non-fuel mineral “essential to the economic and the national security of the United States and the supply chain of which is vulnerable to disruption.”
The Department of Energy said that import dependence puts the supply chain, U.S. companies, and material users at risk.
“For example, 60% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic of Congo, and 80% of that supply is processed in China. The dependency of the nation on foreign sources of critical materials creates a strategic vulnerability for both our economy and our military with respect to adverse foreign government actions, natural disasters, and other events that could disrupt supply,” it said.
Dr. Satoru Nagao, a non-resident fellow at the Washington DC-based Hudson Institute told The Epoch Times that to secure the rare earth supply chain, QUAD nations should exchange information on mining of these minerals and should develop mining together.
“And establish a rare earth supply chain in the Indo-pacific by using its platform along with other like-minded countries including the indo-pacific and European allies of the U.S.,” said Nagao.
The already impinging geopolitical implications of China’s control of the rare earth elements is illustrated by China recently encouraging the formation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a regional trade arrangement that excludes Taiwan whose electronic manufacturers highly rely on China’s rare earth production, according to Thomas J. Duesterberg, a senior fellow with The Hudson.
China wants to exclude Taiwan from RCEP because it wants to divert trade in advanced electronics away from the island and thereby economically and politically threaten Taiwan, said Duesterberg in an analysis published on the US-Taiwan free trade agreement on Feb. 17.
A mine geologist points to where the monazite reef (darker rock) containing the rare-earth minerals is, underground at the SKK rare-earth mine about 80Km from the Western Cape town of Vanrhynsdorp, South Africa on July 29, 2019. SKK has been confirmed as one of the highest-grade deposits of rare-earth minerals in the world. (Rodger Bosch/AFP via Getty Images) China’s Monopoly
China’s monopoly over the production of critical minerals puts them in a bargaining position with the dependent economies like the United States, and experts said QUAD wants to convene a Critical and emerging Technology Working Group to ensure supply chain security in the interlinked global economy.
“The rare earth issue is a looming one—the U.S. and Japan need them, and Australia has significant deposits. Investment in extracting and processing rare earth is needed, and it would be prudent to diversify supply away from China, given the threats it has made in the past,” Ian Hall, the deputy director of Griffith Asia Institute in Brisbane, told The Epoch Times in an email.
China possesses only one-third of the rare earth metal deposits, but it controls over 80 percent of the global market, overtaking the United States, which dominated the market in the prior decades.
“China has dominated the production of rare earth metals since the 1990s, driven largely by two factors: low prices and state-backed investment in infrastructure and technology,” Kristin Vekasi of the University of Maine told Nicholas Hunnewell of the National Bureau of Asian Research in an interview at the Pacific Energy Summit in 2019.
“After China established dominance in production, it used differential pricing to give domestic downstream producers an advantage over foreign buyers. The cheaper domestic prices, as well as the availability of deep expertise, served to attract foreign talent to China,” said Vekasi adding that this Chinese policy was successful and some of the Japanese firms moved their production to China.
“U.S. rare earths are now exported there for separation, processing, and refinement,” said Vekasi.
Tokyo-based Nagao said that he believes the rare earth production developed in China because the supply chain had moved there.
“Most mining is located where most factories are located. US, Australia, and India have much rare earth indeed but not developed. The cost was one of the main factors, mining cost is high in the U.S., Australia, and India,” said Nagao adding that because of the supply chain reliance on China, Japan depends upon China for 60 percent of what it requires.
Rare Earth elements are not scarce but they are difficult to locate and their mining requires the extraction of a large volume of rock which then needs to be processed to separate out critical minerals. The mined elements are then required to go through a “technologically tricky and environmentally hazardous process” to obtain the useful amount of minerals, according to Air Force Magazine.
“In 2012, Japan agreed with India to import three rare earth minerals, including neodymium, cerium, lanthanum. But these are just 10 percent of what Japan needs,” said Nagao adding that with QUAD focusing on critical technology supply chains there would be a coordinated effort to overcome the Chinese hegemony.
QUAD nations have a varying degree of rare earth mineral reserves. Out of the total 2020 world reserves of 120,000 million metric tons (REO), China has 44 million, India has 6.9 million Australia has 4.1 million, and the United States 1.5 million, according to Statista. Vietnam, which is a part of the QUAD plus, has competitive reserves of 22 million.
QUAD expanded during the pandemic, with the involvement of New Zealand, South Korea, and Vietnam. This is referred to as the QUAD plus, according to the Royal United Services Institute.
QUAD’s focus on critical metals and critical technologies has not gone well with the Chinese—when asked about the QUAD summit, Zhao Lijian, spokesperson of China’s Foreign Ministry told a press conference on March 12 that exchanges and cooperation between countries shouldn’t undermine the interests of the third party.
“China has invested substantially in improving its refining technology over the past years, forging a definite advantage in this regard. The West currently lacks the relevant talent pool and efficiency to compete with China, plus they face much higher costs to do by themselves instead of importing,” Chen Zhanheng, deputy head of the Association of China Rare Earth Industry told the Global Times, the Chinese state-run media on March 12. Zhanheng predicted that China will rule the rare earth mineral supply for the next ten years.