国际稀土市场新格局与中国稀土产业战略选择

The Rare Earths Global Market Updates and the Rare Earths Industry Master Plan of the United States and Its Allies

本文重点、围绕中国稀土产业外部环境问题及自身发展战略展开。依据权威文献、法律和案例解读及对西方稀土企业股权和战略性长协合约、关联交易情报等的追踪分析,指出美国等西方国家采用完全稀土矿加工进口替代,是基于其国际规则优势地位,以“成本收益分析”原则增加本国“社会福利”为考量。然而,国际稀土新格局已超出“经济收益”范畴,西方国家协同推进替代生产加工国多元化,是降低“中间冶炼环节”对中国依存度的政治考虑;针对全球稀土整条产业链进行布局,全面加强其稀土“上游”资源战略整合和“下游”技术应用控制,形成从稀土资源直接投资到下游技术限制节节围堵局面。为此,作者有针对性地提出了中国稀土生产、出口和产业链布局的战略选择。关于中美贸易冲突中中国是否应该使用“稀土牌”问题,文章在讨论部分作了回应。

Amid the heated trade conflict between China and the United States,China will not rule out using rare earth exports as leverage to deal with the situation.This paper responds to the hot topic in the discussion part.Nevertheless,the aims of this paper mainly illustrate the current international market status for the decision makers to address various challenges which Chinese rare earth industry faces from both the domestic side and the international front.The methods include literature review,case study,and market information analysis.The study finds that the United States and Australia transferred rare earths refineries,the most polluted processing section of the rare earths supply chain,to China,Malaysia,and other developing countries,where the economic rationale behind the moves is to increase their national welfare in the cost-benefit analysis.For securing economic well-being and national security,the United States and its allies further lay out the whole supply chain master plan.The strategic control applies to the all stages of the supply chain,from the upstream regarding collaborating on rare earths resources foreign investment policy and consolidating natural resource companies,to the downstream in related to blocking intellectual rights.Meanwhile,in order to undermine China's dominant market status,the western states diversify the rare earths supplier substitutes,e.g.,establishing processing refineries in Malaysia.Followed by the discussion part,the paper offers solutions to the problems of the distressed Chinese industry.