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China to Tighten Limits on Rare Earth Exports
China to Tighten Limits on Rare Earth Exports
David Gray/Reuters
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: December 28, 2010
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The reduction in quotas for the early months of 2011 — a 35 percent drop in tonnage from the first half of this year — is the latest in a series of measures by Beijing that has gradually curtailed much of the world’s supply of rare earths.
China mines more than 95 percent of the global supply of the metals, which are essential for smartphones, electric cars, many computer components and a range of military hardware. In addition, the country mines 99 percent of the least common rare earths, the so-called heavy rare earths that are used in trace amounts but are crucial to many clean energy applications and electronics.
In what seemed to be an effort to reassure traders and users of rare earths, the commerce ministry said in a follow-up statement late Tuesday on its Web site that it had not decided what the total export quotas would be for all of 2011. The ministry typically issues a second, supplementary batch of quotas each summer.
The ministry said on Tuesday night that companies should not make guesses about the total export quotas for next year based on the initial reductions issued earlier in the day.
“We will be considering the production of rare earths in China, domestic demand and sustainable development needs to determine” the full quotas for the entire year, the ministry Web site quoted its foreign trade department director as saying, without naming the director.
Earlier this month, China’s finance ministry raised export taxes to 25 percent from 15 percent for some of the most crucial rare earths. The ministry also extended taxes to exports of some rare earth alloys that previously were not taxed.
China gradually reduced its annual tonnage of export quotas from 2006 to 2009, then cut the tonnage of allowed exports by more than half in the second half of 2010.
Separately, the Chinese government imposed an unannounced embargo on shipments of raw rare earth minerals to Japan from mid-September to late November, a ban that started during a territorial disagreement over disputed islands.
In addition, rule changes for export quotas have had the effect of reducing the availability of supplies leaving China. Until now, the quotas mostly covered alloys and oxides with a rare earth content of at least 50 percent.
Starting next year, industry executives said, exports of some additional alloys will face restrictions as well, which will have the effect of tightening quotas by about 6 percent.
The commerce ministry provided no reasons for its reduction in initial export quotas for next year, and a ministry spokesman declined to elaborate. White House trade officials have begun an investigation into whether China’s export restrictions violate World Trade Organization rules; the W.T.O. prohibits export quotas and export tariffs except for environmental protection and national security.
China’s latest restrictions drew a quick response from the Office of the United States Trade Representative in Washington.
“We are very concerned about China’s export restraints on rare earth minerals,” a spokeswoman for the office, Nefeterius Akeli McPherson, said. “We have raised our concerns with China and we are continuing to work closely on the issue with stakeholders.”
Business leaders and officials in Europe have also raised the alarm, especially in Germany, where a large manufacturing sector relies heavily on imports of Chinese rare earths.
Until a few months ago, Chinese officials said that their rare earth policies were aimed at forcing foreign industries to move high-tech factories to China so as to have access to Chinese rare earths. But as trade frictions have increased, they have given greater emphasis to environmental concerns.
A Chinese official said on Tuesday that pollution worries about rare earth mining were sincere.
“The government is paying more attention to environmental protection, and is retiring older facilities and older technologies,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because of the political implications of rare earth policies, and declined to discuss specifics of the quotas.
Dudley Kingsnorth, a longtime rare earth industry executive and consultant in Perth, Australia, said China’s long series of restrictions, together with uncertainty about Chinese policies, were making it increasingly likely that mines would be opened in the next three years in other countries.
China mines more than 95 percent of the global supply of the metals, which are essential for smartphones, electric cars, many computer components and a range of military hardware. In addition, the country mines 99 percent of the least common rare earths, the so-called heavy rare earths that are used in trace amounts but are crucial to many clean energy applications and electronics.
In what seemed to be an effort to reassure traders and users of rare earths, the commerce ministry said in a follow-up statement late Tuesday on its Web site that it had not decided what the total export quotas would be for all of 2011. The ministry typically issues a second, supplementary batch of quotas each summer.
The ministry said on Tuesday night that companies should not make guesses about the total export quotas for next year based on the initial reductions issued earlier in the day.
“We will be considering the production of rare earths in China, domestic demand and sustainable development needs to determine” the full quotas for the entire year, the ministry Web site quoted its foreign trade department director as saying, without naming the director.
Earlier this month, China’s finance ministry raised export taxes to 25 percent from 15 percent for some of the most crucial rare earths. The ministry also extended taxes to exports of some rare earth alloys that previously were not taxed.
China gradually reduced its annual tonnage of export quotas from 2006 to 2009, then cut the tonnage of allowed exports by more than half in the second half of 2010.
Separately, the Chinese government imposed an unannounced embargo on shipments of raw rare earth minerals to Japan from mid-September to late November, a ban that started during a territorial disagreement over disputed islands.
In addition, rule changes for export quotas have had the effect of reducing the availability of supplies leaving China. Until now, the quotas mostly covered alloys and oxides with a rare earth content of at least 50 percent.
Starting next year, industry executives said, exports of some additional alloys will face restrictions as well, which will have the effect of tightening quotas by about 6 percent.
The commerce ministry provided no reasons for its reduction in initial export quotas for next year, and a ministry spokesman declined to elaborate. White House trade officials have begun an investigation into whether China’s export restrictions violate World Trade Organization rules; the W.T.O. prohibits export quotas and export tariffs except for environmental protection and national security.
China’s latest restrictions drew a quick response from the Office of the United States Trade Representative in Washington.
“We are very concerned about China’s export restraints on rare earth minerals,” a spokeswoman for the office, Nefeterius Akeli McPherson, said. “We have raised our concerns with China and we are continuing to work closely on the issue with stakeholders.”
Business leaders and officials in Europe have also raised the alarm, especially in Germany, where a large manufacturing sector relies heavily on imports of Chinese rare earths.
Until a few months ago, Chinese officials said that their rare earth policies were aimed at forcing foreign industries to move high-tech factories to China so as to have access to Chinese rare earths. But as trade frictions have increased, they have given greater emphasis to environmental concerns.
A Chinese official said on Tuesday that pollution worries about rare earth mining were sincere.
“The government is paying more attention to environmental protection, and is retiring older facilities and older technologies,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because of the political implications of rare earth policies, and declined to discuss specifics of the quotas.
“It’s only a matter of time before China is not the major supplier to the rest of the world,” he said, while adding that there might be supply problems before the other mines can open.
Japanese companies account for half the world’s consumption outside China and have some stockpiles, but have kept secret the size of these stockpiles.
Toshiyuki Shiga, the chief operating officer of Nissan Motor, said at a news conference on Dec. 20 at the Guangzhou auto show in China that his company had weathered the Chinese export halt this autumn with stockpiles held by Nissan’s suppliers. But he warned that any further Chinese export restrictions would create problems.
“If this continues, it becomes a big issue for all of the Japanese auto manufacturers, and not just auto manufacturers, but electronics manufacturers and others,” Mr. Shiga said.
The commerce ministry said on its Web site on Tuesday that it had awarded export quotas totaling 14,446 tons to 31 Chinese-owned and foreign-owned companies.
A year ago, the ministry had awarded 16,304 tons of export quotas to 22 Chinese-owned companies and 5,978 tons of quotas to 10 foreign-owned companies, for a total of 22,282 tons.
The Chinese commerce ministry denied earlier this month that it would reduce export quotas in 2011. Mr. Kingsnorth said that it was still theoretically possible for this to be true, if the government sharply increased its quota allocations for the second half of 2011 to offset the steep drop in quotas allocated at the start of the year.
The ministry typically makes a large allocation of quotas in December that can be used at any time in the following year, and then a supplemental allocation of quotas the following summer. In July of this year, the ministry made a supplemental allocation of 7,976 tons to Chinese-owned and foreign-owned companies.
World consumption outside China totals about 55,000 tons of rare earth minerals a year, and is rising about 7 percent a year, with increases at twice that pace for the particularly high-price minerals needed for clean energy. Annual production outside China is around 7,000 tons but poised to rise to at least 50,000 tons a year within three years. A quirk in how China calculates quotas means that two tons of quota must be used to export a ton of rare earths for some alloys.
The ministry also said that one company previously receiving quotas, not identified as foreign or domestic, had temporarily lost its rights to quotas because it was replacing equipment. Japanese companies account for half the world’s consumption outside China and have some stockpiles, but have kept secret the size of these stockpiles.
Toshiyuki Shiga, the chief operating officer of Nissan Motor, said at a news conference on Dec. 20 at the Guangzhou auto show in China that his company had weathered the Chinese export halt this autumn with stockpiles held by Nissan’s suppliers. But he warned that any further Chinese export restrictions would create problems.
“If this continues, it becomes a big issue for all of the Japanese auto manufacturers, and not just auto manufacturers, but electronics manufacturers and others,” Mr. Shiga said.
The commerce ministry said on its Web site on Tuesday that it had awarded export quotas totaling 14,446 tons to 31 Chinese-owned and foreign-owned companies.
A year ago, the ministry had awarded 16,304 tons of export quotas to 22 Chinese-owned companies and 5,978 tons of quotas to 10 foreign-owned companies, for a total of 22,282 tons.
The Chinese commerce ministry denied earlier this month that it would reduce export quotas in 2011. Mr. Kingsnorth said that it was still theoretically possible for this to be true, if the government sharply increased its quota allocations for the second half of 2011 to offset the steep drop in quotas allocated at the start of the year.
The ministry typically makes a large allocation of quotas in December that can be used at any time in the following year, and then a supplemental allocation of quotas the following summer. In July of this year, the ministry made a supplemental allocation of 7,976 tons to Chinese-owned and foreign-owned companies.
World consumption outside China totals about 55,000 tons of rare earth minerals a year, and is rising about 7 percent a year, with increases at twice that pace for the particularly high-price minerals needed for clean energy. Annual production outside China is around 7,000 tons but poised to rise to at least 50,000 tons a year within three years. A quirk in how China calculates quotas means that two tons of quota must be used to export a ton of rare earths for some alloys.
Los problemas del milenio: ¿quiere usted ser millonario?
Los problemas del milenio: ¿quiere usted ser millonario?
Publicado por Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas el 27 Diciembre, 2010
¿Quién dice que los matemáticos son gente aburrida, rara, inabordable? Lo que no se puede negar es que son perseguidores de verdades, y que, en esa búsqueda, como si se tratara de niños resolviendo crucigramas, a veces les gusta retarse. No estoy seguro de que eso sea bueno o malo, pero lo que sí es cierto es que la competencia (y algún incentivo económico…hay que reconocerlo: nadie es de piedra) ayuda en ocasiones a que las cosas avancen. Sobran anécdotas en la historia de la ciencia a este respecto: Johann Bernoulli propuso el problema de la braquistócrona (es decir, obtener las ecuaciones de la curva entre dos puntos recorrida en el menor lapso de tiempo por un cuerpo con velocidad inicial nula, sin rozamiento y sólo afectado por la fuerza de la gravedad) a los lectores de Acta Eruditorum en Junio de 1696. Él mismo publicó una solución que al final del día resultó ser errónea. Como respuesta, Isaac Newton, Jakob Bernoulli (su hermano), Gottfried Leibniz, Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus y Guillaume de L´ Hôpital aportaron la solución correcta. ¿Quieren saber cuán deformada llegó a mis oídos una anécdota apócrifa sobre este reto?: el pobre Johann Bernoulli llevaba meses desesperado por encontrar las ecuaciones de la braquistócrona cuando en un arrebato de rabia decidió enviarle una carta a Newton retándole a resolver el problema. Newton recibió la carta, la leyó, se encerró en su oficina de la Casa de la Moneda y, después de cuatro horas, salió con unos papeles en la mano que contenían la solución correcta (¡por supuesto!).
El atrabiliario Sir Isaac ordenó a su secretaria que se la enviara a Bernoulli y que le dijera, además, que “¡no lo molestara con esas tonterías!” La leyenda es una pura lucha de egos. Como moraleja positiva se podría sacar que sin el reto no habría aparecido la solución. Si atendemos a la historia real la moraleja no es muy distinta: reto, talento, esfuerzo y, como consecuencia, la “verdad”.
El Instituto Clay es una fundación sin ánimo de lucro que se dedica a incrementar y difundir el conocimiento de las Matemáticas. Sito en el Cambridge estadounidense, una ciudad muy cercana a Boston, fue fundado en 1998 por London T. Clay, adinerado hombre de negocios, y su esposa Lavinia D. Clay. El matemático Arthur Jaffe, de la Universidad de Harvard, fue su primer presidente.
La fundación aporta distintas becas y premios para matemáticos prometedores, pero si por algo es conocida es por la proposición en el año 2000 de los Problemas del Milenio. De forma análoga a los problemas de Hilbert, que fueron enunciados en 1900 por el propio Hilbert y cuyo tratamiento y resolución (de la mayoría de ellos) dieron un gran impulso a las matemáticas del siglo XX, el Instituto Clay reunió a los físicos y matemáticos más brillantes del mundo para que elaboraran una lista de siete problemas que hicieran lo mismo con las del siglo XXI. ¿La diferencia con los “altruistas” problemas de Hilbert?: la resolución de cada uno de ellos le supondrá al “ganador” ¡¡un millón de dólares!!
La lista es la siguiente:
1) P contra NP: la pregunta fundamental es si cualquier problema que puede ser verificadoeficientemente por un ordenador, puede ser también resuelto eficientemente por un ordenador. La noción de eficiencia está relacionada con el número de pasos que necesita un algoritmo para verificar y solucionar el problema. Este es uno de los grandes problemas abiertos en Ciencia Computacional.
2) La conjetura de Hodge: la definición de esta conjetura es completamente técnica, así que espero que me disculpen: “Si X es una variedad proyectiva compleja, entonces todas las clases de Hodge de X son una combinación lineal con coeficientes racionales de las clases de cohomología de las subvariedades complejas de X”. ¿Entienden ahora por qué la resolución de estos problemas vale un millón de dólares? Esta es una de las grandes conjeturas abiertas de la Geometría algebraica.
3) La conjetura de Poincaré: “la única variedad cerrada y simplemente conexa (es decir, sin agujeros) de dimensión tres, es la esfera tridimensional.” Esta conjetura fue demostrada por Grigori Perelman en 2002, lo que lo hizo acreedor a la medalla Fields (el premio más prestigioso en Matemáticas), que debió recibir en el Congreso Internacional de Matemáticas celebrado en Madrid en 2006, y, por supuesto, al millón de dólares ofrecido por la fundación Clay. ¿Saben lo que hizo?: renunció a ambos. Debido a la demostración, la conjetura perdió su estatus y se convirtió en un teorema. Este era uno de los grandes problemas abiertos en las áreas de la Geometría y la Topología.
4) La hipótesis de Riemann: esta conjetura está relacionada con la función zeta de Riemann, definida en 1859. La hipótesis dice lo siguiente: “la parte real de todo cero no trivial (es decir, los puntos donde la función se anula) de la función zeta de Riemann es ½”. Por su relación con la distribución de los números primos, este es uno de los grandes problemas abiertos de la Teoría de Números.
5) Existencia Yang-Mills y gap de masa: “se debe demostrar que la Teoría Cuántica de Campos Yang-Mills, teoría que subyace al celebérrimo Modelo Estándar de Física de Partículas, es compatible con la Teoría Especial de la Relatividad. Al mismo tiempo, se debe demostrar que la partícula más ligera que predice la teoría tiene masa estrictamente positiva, es decir, que la teoría tiene un gap de masa.” Este es uno de los grandes problemas abiertos de la Física Teórica.
6) Existencia y suavidad de las soluciones a las ecuaciones de Navier-Stokes: las ecuaciones de Navier-Stokes son las que describen el movimiento de un fluido en el espacio. Las soluciones numéricas a estas ecuaciones tienen grandes aplicaciones en física e ingeniería. Sin embargo, a nivel teórico su entendimiento es incompleto. En concreto, las soluciones incluyen el fenómeno de la turbulencia, que sigue siendo uno de los grandes problemas no resueltos de la física. Técnicamente el problema del milenio se enuncia como sigue: Probar o dar un contraejemplo de la siguiente afirmación: “En un espacio tridimensional y en el tiempo, dado un campo inicial de velocidades, existe un vector velocidad y un escalar presión que son al mismo tiempo suaves y globalmente definidos, esto es, que resuelven las ecuaciones de Navier-Stokes.” Este es uno de los grandes problemas abiertos del Análisis matemático.
7) Conjetura de Birch y Swinerton-Dyer: la conjetura está relacionada con cierto tipo de ecuaciones, aquellas que definen curvas elípticas sobre los números racionales. Dice lo siguiente: “existe una manera de decidir si tales ecuaciones tienen un número finito o infinito de soluciones racionales”. Este es uno de los grandes problemas abiertos del Álgebra.
Decíamos antes que cierto incentivo económico favorece que las cosas vayan mejor. Grigori Perelman es un claro ejemplo de que el dinero no es tan importante. Renunció radicalmente a los premios y al millón de dólares poco después de que le fueran concedidos. Respecto al dinero declaró:
“No quiero estar en exposición como un animal en el zoológico. No soy un héroe de las matemáticas. Ni siquiera soy tan exitoso. Por eso no quiero que todo el mundo me esté mirando”.
Su actitud habla claramente de instinto que usualmente mueve a los científicos: aprender, saber y llegar un poco más lejos. Si me permiten que sea sincero, su actitud también nos indica cierta pérdida de contacto con la realidad: Perelman podrá no ser muchas cosas, pero después de resolver uno de los problemas más difíciles jamás planteados SÍ es un héroe de las matemáticas. En cualquier caso, para aquellos que vivimos más cerca de la Tierra espero haber mostrado un nuevo camino hacia el “éxito económico”. Tradicionalmente se dice que es imposible hacerse rico trabajando. ¿Y pensando? El guante está tendido.
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Fernando Jiménez Alburqueque (CSIC) es investigador del Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas
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