[MisterTea]

I really would like to see answers to the four questions at the end. Though I would hazard a guess that the answers to the first three can be summed up as "it's easier and cheaper to let China do the dirty work." The last question I cant answer as I don't understand boom-bust mining cycles.

Edit to add:

> After all, it turns out tungsten actually isn't hard to find! It's all over the United States. In fact, it's pretty much all over the world.

The Wikipedia Tungsten article states the largest reserves are in China followed by Canada, Russia, Vietnam and Bolivia. This contradicts the articles claim. Just because it's all over does not mean it is easy to dig up and refine. Some clarification is needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten#Production

[Tuna-Fish]

> The Wikipedia Tungsten article states the largest reserves are in China followed by Canada, Russia, Vietnam and Bolivia. This contradicts the articles claim.

No, it does not, it's just a confusion of the term reserves. That's not on you, though, because everyone constantly gets it wrong.

Reserves are not estimates of the amount of a mineral underground. To be counted as proven reserve, you need to show that the mineral is economically extractable at market prices. Specifically, by starting to extract them. They are "working inventory" of mines that have been developed, they are not our understanding of how the minerals are distributed. They are also a function of commodity prices, not something that remains constant unless you dig them.

China has so much of the worldwide production and reserves because mining is an extremely capital-intensive industry, that is also sensitive to labor costs and environmental legislation. For a long time, China had the trifecta of lax legislation, cheap labor, and sufficient political stability to attract investment. US or Europe can't compete because mining there is more expensive, the third world can't compete because people are wary of investing billions into projects that might go to zero for political stability reasons.

Should the market prices of key minerals rise to the point where it makes sense to mine them outside of China, reserves will be developed and production will shift. This will probably require political will to either tariff Chinese production or subsidize production outside China, because so far China has wielded mineral exports as a weapon only for brief periods, being careful to release exports to crater prices often enough to kill competing projects.

[nullhole]

> To be counted as proven reserve, you need to show that the mineral is economically extractable at market prices. Specifically, by starting to extract them.

You don't need to be actually mining the stuff for it to be considered a reserve, at least in the Canadian (CIM) definitions. You do need at least a pre-feasibility study, and details on market prices & contracts.

The general point is right though, "mineral resources" means there's metal in the ground, "mineral reserves" means there's metal in the ground that can be economically mined, with consideration of the mining methods, infrastructure, legal title, environmental impact, metallurgy, market contracts, etc.

[philwelch]

Nobody’s going to pay for a feasibility study in a regulatory climate with sufficient barriers to mining. Canada might have less of that thanks to its resource-extraction economy but it’s a huge problem in the US.

[a2tech]

The US has lots of tungsten and other minerals. The problem is mining them here--people really don't want to see huge holes in the ground, industrial run off, and ecological collapse.

If the fundamentals of international resource extraction changes (which because of the increase in wages and living standards and expectations in China is happening) then we might see wide spread and rapid mining happening in the US. My questions in that scenario are 1) who will work these mines? The US is running at very high employment right now, and mining is very hard work 2) where would our ore refinement equipment and skills come from? China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. They have infrastructure to BUILD the infrastructure for ore extraction and refinement. My understanding is that they're uninterested in selling that currently 3) then all the other local issues like where will they be able to sell locals on building giant mines, dealing with the heavy traffic, potential environmental concerns, etc.

[hunterpayne]

This isn't a pretty unhinged take.

> China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them.

No it doesn't (at best its about 35 years) and it often (mostly) uses equipment made in the west. In fact, if you want to extract something from the earth, its very likely you need a US firm to help you do it (depends on how hard the material is to extract).

> and ecological collapse

You can do mining responsibly, it just costs more. US firms about 20 years ago tried to get the US government to subsidize their industries to compensate for the extra costs. The politicians said no and voiced environmental concerns. So those materials started coming from China and the 3rd world where they were extracted using even dirtier methods than the US was using at the time. It turns out that pollution doesn't obey international borders though.

Finally, most of the material China exports is raw and its refined somewhere else. The only things China refines for themselves are either a) is easy and they need them domestically or b) the refining process is very dirty. Additionally, mining almost always takes place far from population centers. The basic reason for this is that all the material near population centers was extracted far in the past. Your entire take has little to no resemblance with reality.

[maxglute]

This bizarro take. PRC mining equipment has been decoupled from US for years, they don't require hardware from western producers anymore, from terrestrial to deep sea. The last dependency was mostly unconventional shale since US good at shale but that's mostly consultative, and PRC quickly found out US horizontal drilling doesn't translate well for their deeper reserves, so they had to localize tools there as well. The talent gap is also stupendously in favor of PRC, they produce like 15x more mining graduates per year, their university of mining tech enrolls more than all US mining programs combined. They lead in midstream refining, not just REE bottleneck, all that AU/BR ore gets shipped to PRC for refining for a reason.

>almost always takes place far from population centers

No in PRC case, they literally build population centers to service mining, part of third front strategy in 60s to move mining into rugged interior to protect against US/USSR. If you want to mine/process at PRC scale, you need to plop a few million people in large urban complexes i.e. boutou has 3 million people, they're not 5000 people mining towns.

[MisterTea]

> > China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them.

It's amazing how many people think China bootstrapped its industry from first principals when all it did was lure western companies to move their production over and "learned" by copying.

[matheusmoreira]

> all it did was lure western companies to move their production over and "learned" by copying

Yeah, and they fell for it. Handed over all their intellectual "property" to the chinese on a silver platter. Moved all their production to China, thereby deindustrializing their own countries and impoverishing their fellow citizens to the point of nearly wiping out the middle class.

I wonder if it's even possible for the west to save itself at this point.

[clarionbell]

What happened one way, can happen the other. Recently, I've watched a documentary about late 19th century steel maker. His approach was very similar to what many seem to consider "uniquely Chinese" for some reason.

He bought IP from people who didn't see value in it. He obtained state subsidies and convinced politicians to see his sector as a national priority. When he couldn't buy the know how, he had it reverse engineered from samples.

West just needs to go back to what used to work, and what still works. If China could industrialize itself from practically nothing, why couldn't western countries do something similar? Some of them already did after WWII.

It's just a matter of will. And accepting that there will have to be compromises and certain level of sacrifice.

[cucumber3732842]

>Yeah, and they fell for it. Handed over all their intellectual "property" to the Chinese on a silver platter. Moved all their production to China

"Fell for it" looks a lot like "basically compelled by the economic impacts of public policy and political winds" so far as I can tell.

Some man in a C-suite in 2002 who was wrestling with a decision to refresh domestic factories with capital investments that would pay off over the next 15yr and be competitive for 30 or build new in China could only make that decision one way without being ousted by his own board. Even if the economics barely penciled out positively after compliance costs the political winds made it too risky.

I mean, yeah, someone fell for it. The public, the politicians, etc. etc. But it's not like anyone who didn't have to grapple with the numbers didn't know what they were doing was suspect at best, though many of course deluded themselves into believing in it.

How many decades and dollars did we spend shipping trash plastic overseas because they provided us with receipts saying they were recycling it when they were landfilling, burning or dumping it? Everyone who knew the chemistry and energy prices knew it didn't really work but still, it happened.

[maxglute]

West had nothing to teach/copy in many cases - there's a reason PRC produced magnitude more mining engineers for decades. Leaching MREE/HREE from ionic clays is a geologic tech stack that PRC fully built out indigenously from 60s. Only reason M/HREE can be refined at _scale_ and _economically_ today was PRC innovating on geology west never bothered in (west ree stack concentrated on hard rock extraction), and now west has to try to replicate via first principles.

[pseudohadamard]

The "the Chinese can only copy us" thing is quite common in some circles, just as the "all the Japanese can do is copy us" was 50-odd years ago. China overtook the west in a lot of areas 10-20 years ago, to see an example of this travel to any city in China. It's like travelling into the future, we're a decade or more behind them at this stage.

[runsWphotons]

No, we don't.

[throwway120385]

That's exactly what the US did in the 1800's, so clearly they're copying a winning strategy.

[FpUser]

One rule for me another one for thee.

[FpUser]

>"when all it did was lure western companies to move their production over and "learned" by copying"

Would you fucking stop crying already. What did you expect them to do? Commit to being a slave and leave all the value to western corps? And who asked western companies to outsource everything? It seems that for an extra buck they would sell everything. So you basically reap what you sow

[7thpower]

This.

Every time there is a discussion about how China is wiping the floor with the west, someone wants to chime in that they stole IP. It is an unhealthy fixation and betrays the fact that they are genuinely more efficient in many cases, even when labor costs and subsidies are removed.

Not to mention, complaining about China stealing IP is a pacifier. Even where true, it does not change the competitive dynamics at this point because any damage has already been done.

If we, as the west, want to be great, we will have to move beyond the victim stage.

[AngryData]

What do you call a man who stole a lathe 50 years ago and spent that entire time learning and using that lathe? Is he still just a thief? Or is he actually now a skilled machinist with immense value and skills?

[noleary]

Reserves means something specific in the context of minerals! Reserves measure 'economically viable' deposits. [1]

There used to be tons of tungsten mines in the USA, e.g. in Colorado linked below.

[1] https://resourcecapitalfunds.com/insights/rcf-partners-blog/...

[2] https://coloradogeologicalsurvey.org/publications/tungsten-m...

[bell-cot]

Yes, but it should be emphasized how dependent "Reserves" are on both exploration work, and current assumptions about future mining/refining/market conditions.

China's secret to having most of the world's Reserves may be that they bored a lot more test holes (to actually know "the rock in >THIS< spot is X% tungsten") than anyone else, then made some more-optimistic assumptions.

[to11mtm]

Ehhh, it could go both ways (as far as over-optimism)

On one hand, historically there's a lot of sparsely populated land; that makes it easier to both do exploration and partition off the land.

Also there is China's more central economy planning; i.e. if it's truly worth it they are more willing to do something about relocating people while 'selling it better' (which is again helped by the sparse populations where they are looking.)

That is, unless you are saying they fudged the sampling....

However, that's still other a weird reversal of the geopolitical playbook; that is, one could argue that the -smartest- thing the US/EU can do, is to import whatever natural materials they can, until the 'clock' runs out, then the native materials can be extracted (even at the 'ecologically correct' cost.)

[lkbm]

> The Wikipedia Tungsten article states the largest reserves are in China followed by Canada, Russia, Vietnam and Bolivia. This contradicts the articles claim. Just because it's all over does not mean it is easy to dig up and refine.

It doesn't contradict the claim.

Just because it's all over does not mean it is easy to dig up and refine, but just because it's not the largest reserve doesn't mean it's not easy to dig up and refine.

[aeternum]

It's often hard to beat bulk mining. When you're already mining a quarter billion tons of iron and 5B tons of coal, you get a decent amount of all other trace(rare-earth) metals as part of that stream.

It's far easier to just collect tungsten as it rolls down your conveyor belt.

[kbelder]

The Minecraft paradigm.

[user____name]

Look, we can't just recreate the mining industry, it would crowd out all others, no more doctors and engineers, the children yearn for the mines!

[CGMthrowaway]

>I really would like to see answers to the four questions at the end

The bottom line is that China has the biggest most economical tungsten reserves, they have been able to flood the market with predatory pricing for the last 40 years and they almost completely control the ore processing bottleneck as well.

For this to change the US govt would have to enter major agreements w US mines, offering relaxed permitting and a guaranteed price

[gmerc]

Wait until you find out the US is flooding the software market with "predatory" SaaS products. Point being, it's only "predatory" if others do it.

[fc417fc802]

Textbook whataboutism. I agree that US BigTech strategy of dumping free product is predatory and arguably a regulatory failure (or success, depending on your values and goals). But that's got absolutely nothing to do with the current discussion.

[petre]

> The Wikipedia Tungsten article states the largest reserves are in China followed by Canada, Russia, Vietnam and Bolivia

Easy one, then. The administration will kidnap the president of Bolivia, install a replacement and strike a minerals deal.

[matheusmoreira]

This doesn't even seem that far fetched at this point. The economic influence of the USA is being eroded at every turn. Their military capabilities could very well turn out to be their last hope one day. South America stands virtually no chance against even a decadent USA. It's actually embarrassing how weak South America is.

[pjc50]

The problem is that the main military enemy of South America is Other Bits Of South America, especially internal enemies. That's why Costa Rica has no military: can't have a military coup without a military.

(also the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War was so devastating that nobody wants to get back to that point)

[giantg2]

"it's easier and cheaper to let China do the dirty work."

This is true for just about any industrial due to the environmental regulation disparity.