Published:
1 Nov 2022 20:34 GMT
The Australian Resources Minister said that Canberra and Washington will work together in an attempt to end Beijing’s monopoly in the field.
Australian Resources Minister Madeleine King said ending reliance on rare earths and crucial minerals from China is “an impossible dream” for Western countries.
“[China] is a country that saw this need approaching and took full advantage of it,” declared the minister during an interview with Bloomberg published this Tuesday.
King stressed that under these circumstances, Canberra and Washington will work together to increase investments in the field and put an end to China’s monopoly in the market for these materials. In his words, Australia’s goal is “to make the most of the natural wealth that we have of these resources so that we can provide an alternative source of these materials to China.”
For his part, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tuesday that “countries with crucial mineral resources must play a positive role in protecting the security and stability of relevant industrial supply chains.” . “No one should politicize, instrumentalize or militarize the world economy“, he highlighted.
- The rare earths are a group of 17 elements that includes scandium, yttrium, and 15 lanthanides. The name is misleading, since they are not earths but metals that in natural conditions are almost always oxidized.
- Rare earths have magnetic and conductive properties that are used in a wide range of products, from components of electric cars and touch screens for smartphones to systems of defending anti-missile
- China is responsible for 80% of the global supply of these metals.
