Core: The rare earth in China can be said to be a treasure given to this land by God, and China is the only country in the world that supplies a large number of rare earth products of different grades and varieties. As the saying goes: "There is oil in the Middle East and rare earth in China." China announced restrictions on the export of rare earths, aiming at changing the above abnormal situation. China is not the only country with rare earths in the world, but it has taken on the role of supplying rare earths to the world in the past decades, resulting in the destruction of its natural environment and the consumption of its own resources.

China once accounted for 90% of the world's rare earth production, but this strategic resource comparable to oil has been exported cheaply or even at a loss for decades. However, Japan and the United States imported from China at a low price, and made a ten-fold profit after deep processing, or simply sealed it up, with reserves of several decades.

At the end of June, 165438+ entered the fourth quarter, and the market inquiry was enthusiastic, which represented the strong purchasing desire of enterprises using new rare earth materials. The year-end market seems to be surging. As of165438+1October 24th, the mainstream price of praseodymium-neodymium oxide market is 248,000-250,000 yuan/ton, and the mainstream price of praseodymium-neodymium metal market is 324,000 yuan/ton. The quotation of some metal enterprises has reached 325,000 yuan/ton, up 2,000 yuan per ton from last week. The mainstream market prices of dysprosium oxide and terbium oxide are 1, 230- 1, 240 yuan/kg and 2850-2900 yuan/kg respectively. Compared with last week, the prices of dysprosium oxide and terbium oxide rose by about 20 yuan and 50 yuan respectively. This rebound is the first time since the commercial storage at the end of May. Although there have been many signs of rising in the middle because of the holding of the purchasing and storage meeting, many enterprises seem to smell that the State Reserve Center is expected to complete the second commercial purchasing and storage this year, which has become very much expected, leading to the recent year-end market with relatively bullish prices.

In order to reverse the situation of cheap rare earth export, China has actually taken a series of measures and played a long game with Japan, the United States and other countries. In 20 10, the government of China reduced the export quota of rare earths from 50,000 tons to about 30,000 tons, a decrease of nearly 40%, and greatly increased the export tariffs.

After the implementation of the policy, the price of rare earths began to soar. In 20 10, the unit price of rare earth export rose from 5388.66 USD/ton at the beginning of the year to 65300 USD/ton at the end of the year, which increased by nearly 1 1 times. 20 1 1, the price rose to a record high of196,000 USD a ton, equivalent to 36 times that at the beginning of 2005.

However, China's measures to protect rare earth resources have aroused joint opposition from the United States, Japan and other countries. Japan, which benefited the most from China's cheap rare earths, launched a systematic "rare earth war" against China. Japanese political circles, enterprises and academic circles went into battle together, and the tactics used in the rare earth war were staggering.

Today, China occupies more than 90% of the global rare earth market share, but it lacks the market pricing power, which has aroused the strong concern of people of insight. The article "China should immediately ban the export of rare earths" by Dr. Qingyan of Peking University was once widely reprinted on the Internet. According to a survey of a domestic website, 97.6% netizens think that the country should strengthen the export control of rare earths, and more than 60% people are in favor of using strategic industrial raw materials as bargaining chips with Europe and the United States.

In fact, the Ministry of Land and Resources of China has been supervising the production of rare earths since 2007. At the beginning of this month, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also revealed that it will improve relevant policies and regulations as soon as possible, actively promote the introduction of special plans and policies for the development of rare earth industries, cooperate with the Ministry of Commerce to improve the export management mechanism, further refine the export tax number of rare earth products, strictly identify the qualifications of rare earth export enterprises, improve the distribution method of rare earth export quotas, and prevent the loss of resources.

According to the new plan, the total export quota of rare earths in China will be controlled within 35,000 tons/year in the next six years, and the export of dysprosium, terbium, thulium, lutetium and yttrium is strictly prohibited. At the same time, the state also plans to carry out large-scale merger and reorganization of the rare earth industry, and gradually build about 20 key enterprise groups while standardizing the operation of the industry.

Summarize; The author thinks that the national economy can only starve to death because of the shortage of rare earths. We can't pay for our regrets, we can only work for our future, and we can't be regrets. Therefore, we should stand on the economic height and call on everyone to protect our rare earths, less illegal mining, more orderly mining, less smuggling, more regular export, less mining and more protection …