[ericmay]

> Now that China has become more adversarial and also more established (you mean people want to actually get PAID to slave away in a mine, or even worse, refuse to even work in a dangerous and dirty pit mine?!) the US is facing some hard decisions.

There is an implication here that the United States is immune or afraid of doing “hard” or “dirty” work and so we outsourced refining and mining to China.

This doesn’t seem to be correct.

China has a national strategy to dominate refining of rare earth minerals and critical components and our entire society wants cheap products and China was the cheapest place for this stuff and environmental rules are more lax, and with an authoritarian regime supporting and fast tracking the business for strategic reasons, well there you have it.

Part of the strategy involves decoupling China from a weak link in the energy supply chain infrastructure: oil and refining rare earths, manufacturing products that use them, and more is how they are pursuing some level of energy independence from the USA which controls oil flows globally, for the most part.

With respect to avoidance of “dirty” jobs. The EU is far, far worse in this respect than the United States is or was.

[a2tech]

People in the US will do dirty jobs if thats what there are, but like people everywhere (in aggregate), would rather not.

We outsourced refining and mining to China because 1) it was cheap 2) it meant poisoning the ground and air and ripping up vast tracts of land somewhere else.

China's rare earth metals stratagem I believe grew out of this--it didn't happen immediately, but rather some bright bulb saw the growing reliance on access to the minerals and encouraged internal growth and acquisition competing resources. Absolutely, very clever.

[ericmay]

But let's be very clear here. the US might have outsourced those jobs, which I think is an oversimplification, but the EU also outsourced those jobs and the Chinese welcomed and encouraged that outsourcing. Americans, Europeans, and Chinese workers were all onboard at a national level for this arrangement.

I want to be very clear here to avoid any misunderstanding of an application of moral judgement against the United States for "outsourcing dirty jobs".

> China's rare earth metals stratagem I believe grew out of this--it didn't happen immediately, but rather some bright bulb saw the growing reliance on access to the minerals and encouraged internal growth and acquisition competing resources. Absolutely, very clever.

This could be true. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, in that China never intended to join a US and European led world order because doing so would compromise the power of the authoritarian CCP (free speech, free markets are incompatible with communism) and this became the eventual strategy to work toward energy independence. Of course "independence" isn't a real thing here, just less reliance. You can't run fighter jets or tanks on batteries or solar panels.

[tbossanova]

Might be able to run a tank on battery one day. Fighter jet seems harder though

[RupertSalt]

> tungsten

> some bright bulb

I see what you did there

[wolvoleo]

> With respect to avoidance of “dirty” jobs. The EU is far, far worse in this respect than the United States is or was.

Well yeah. Because we care about the environment and people like to enjoy their retirement instead of sitting in a wheelchair with COPD due to inhaling a lifetime of toxic dust.

China is getting better at it too, but only a few years ago I remember a story of all the toxic lakes where all the byproducts of neodymium mining were dumped.

[orochimaaru]

You don’t care about the environment. You care about the environment in your backyard. Otherwise you would not import rare earths and minerals from China (which Europe does).

[estearum]

Pretty sure consumers would still buy all the nice downstream products even if they damaged their own backyards.

Evidence: Long history of us doing exactly that.

Valuing convenience, modern products etc does not mean one "doesn't care" about the negative externalities, just like going out to eat at a nice restaurant doesn't mean someone "doesn't care" about saving money.

[tbossanova]

Individual EUers might care about the environment. It’s pretty hard to personally avoid any dirty imported stuff as you just don’t know where it all ends up. Though I guess overall voting patterns might back up your argument

[buckle8017]

What are you talking about its trivial to avoid purchasing product's produced in environmentally unfriendly ways.

All products from China are manufactured with electricity that is largely coal.

You just mean it's not economical.

[j16sdiz]

> electricity that is largely coal.

Kind of. China is at 55% Coal and 40% Renewable, with renewable climbing each year.

Compare to USA 40% Gas, 20% Coal, 20% Renewable, with renewable more or less steady.

[buckle8017]

Brother if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

[Saline9515]

Are you trying to say that it's trivial to avoid buying Chinese manufactured products? Where is the keyboard you are typing on made, by the way?

[buckle8017]

Sure it's trivial, but it's inconvenient and expensive.

I don't do it because I accept that my keyboard was made with coal.

But I would prefer my keyboard was made in America burning American coal.

[to11mtm]

... you know when you put it that way, it would not surprise me if lobbyists dovetailed the 'cant do stuff in US/EU because of env regs' with the various types of Union busting the US likes to do and for some in the EU it would be the perfect scapegoat for...

[pests]

> a few years ago I remember a story of all the toxic lakes where all the byproducts of neodymium mining were dumped.

You might be thinking of Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China.

[JSR_FDED]

Sorry but while that was once true, the current administration has reversed that pretty dramatically. You personally might care about the environment, but when you use “we” in the context of US/China it no longer holds true.

[wolvoleo]

No I mean "we" as in the EU, definitely not the US. The US is sliding back fast, being the only country to pull out of the paris accord (which itself was only the bare minimum needed to halt climate change)

[pixl97]

A good way to put it as "China was very willing to subsidize the cost of mining these elements as environmental damage".

[seg_lol]

Don't make China the boogey man here, when it was America's rich that exported all those things (jobs, manufacturing, solid supply chains) to China.

[maxglute]

West fine with migrant labours doing hard and dirty work hidden from prying eyes (agriculture fields, meat packing plants). Mining just as strategic, but hard to hide big holes in the earth from constituents. I'm sure push comes to shove, US can import a bunch of central Americans to do hard and dirty work in mining.

[ericmay]

Yep and the workers from those countries prefer that arrangement since it pays better. The alternative is they don’t do the work, we just pay higher prices, and then they don’t get paid and stay home.

> I'm sure push comes to shove, US can import a bunch of central Americans to do hard and dirty work in mining.

Yea let’s ban migrant labor and the entrance of migrants now so we don’t have this moral failure. :)

By the way, the east (as opposed to the west) is fine with migrant labor too. That’s why remittances are a thing. Well, when they’re not being xenophobic or whatever.

[maxglute]

TBH papering over xenophobia is easy because it's just foreigners. Problem with mining is extractors are scarring mother earth, that's the unfortunate optics problem for nimby's, not people, but landscape/backyard, even if it's in the middle of nowhere. I suppose that's why fracking gets an easier pass, because the hole is smol.