[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.

[navigate8310]

The biggest reason as others have already discussed, manufacturing is inherently dirty work so better off shore and be concerned about the environment locally.

[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.

[matheusmoreira]

The US government fell for it too. China made it economically attractive to deindustrialize and destroy your own country? Tax them until it's no longer the case. I don't know. Do something. Respond to the situation. Tip the scales so that the ominous board of directors has no choice but to swallow the bitter pill and like it. Trump is trying it but looks like it's too little too late.

The fact is at some point the USA shifted from nation to an amalgamate of corporations. The US government serves the interests of corporations that have gone multinational, corporations that are barely american at this point, corporations that now kowtow before China lest they lose access to the chinese market and its growing middle class. Meanwhile China consistently demonstrates the ability to plan and execute long term strategies that advance the interests of the chinese civilization. I don't like it but I have to respect it. They're making democracies and their leaders look like complete idiots who care about nothing but muh reelection.

[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.

[MisterTea]

> The "the Chinese can only copy us" thing is quite common in some circles,

Because they do. It's a well known fact that they outright copy western designs and sell them at significantly cheaper prices. The ~$100 Diesel fuel heaters on Vevor and elsewhere are 1:1 copies of German Westabo heaters that retail for upward of $3500 USD. The story of the Cherry QQ which was a 1:1 copy of the Chevy Spark. The list goes on. But please, keep pretending they didn't just copy everyone else while many of their engineers went to western universities and bought home that knowledge.

[Dylan16807]

The scare quotes the earlier comment put around "learned" are unwarranted, but "they copied us instead of bootstrapping" and "they can only copy us" are very different statements.

[runsWphotons]

No, we don't.

[maxglute]

Yes, you/"we" do.

There's a reason western M/HREE (i.e. the strategic good stuff) strategy hedges on similar iconic clays finds like PRC, because that's the only working industrial chain that extracts M/HREEs at scale. It's why AU/Lynas focus on ionic clays and not US hardrock... which btw doesn't even pretend it will do anything meaningful for mineral security other than light REE.

US+co is trying to replicate PRC M/HREE industry, without the techstack that took PRC decades to build out, because US+co never developed these geologies in the first place. The relevant upstream extraction/mmidstream refining tech for kind of deposits was never pursued in the west.

Now west can move fast due to second mover advantage, but it's going to be slow going like PRC EUV. Until then it's going to require all sorts of parallel efforts like recycling, or materials engineering to reduce M/HREEs to mitigate gap.

[fc417fc802]

> it's going to be slow going like PRC EUV

Not even close. EUV lithography is as close to magic as it gets. By any reasonable assessment it shouldn't work but a few wizards somehow manage to pull it off.

[maxglute]

Not even close in sense it's likely going to take west longer to build M/HREE at scale than PRC figuring out EUV + entire indigenize semi supply chain at scale.

The execution difference is PRC is generating enough semi talent to replicate EUV and entire semi stack sooner than later. They already have the most complete localized semi supply chain in single nation, i.e. they're doing ASML+5000 niche suppliers at once. Hence consensus estimate is they'll get there somewhere 2030-2035. Reminder EUV is basically a "tiny" ass effort from a handful of countries, for reference airbus/boeing each has 150k employees for commercial aviation, EUV was developed by 3k from Zeiss, 1k from Cymer, 13k from ASML... over 20 years of casual development. It's ultimately a hard but narrow specialization problem, hence PRC EUV prototype beating estimates/expectations. It's not magic, it's just people + cash + industrial vertical integration that PRC is uniquely well equipped to deal with.

VS west has "easier" M/HREE tree to rebuild on paper but lack both talent #s, and state capacity to execute. M/HREE is ~20 minerals each has it's own midstream extraction process that require dozens of plants and 100s of stages for 5/6/7+ sigma high end strategic use. It's a different monumental/gargantuan task, on top of the sheer fucking scale of infra involved. I noted Batou has 3 million residents for a reason, that's the scale of M/HREE industry west has to replicate. It takes 8-10 years to get a refinery up in the west, the chance of west getting 100s of highly polluting industrial chains up for M/HREE before PRC sorts out semi is close to zero. It's a mass scale industrial mobilization problem that west is uniquely not well equipped to deal with. I'd wager M/HREE more bureaucratic magic than even EUV technical magic for west.

Meanwhile, there isn't a single M/HREE plant in western pipeline that will do anything at scale until maybe 2030, only thing in pipeline is validating unproven lab extraction/refining methods by ~2028, if it works, will take years to scale extraction, and even more years to scale refining.

[dv_dt]

I think western companies and governments have ingrained into their own thinking that the optimization strategy of of minimal investments in fundamental sciences and engineering as real constraint. (actually in more that just that, but that goes off topic..) It's a short term focused fictionalization / profit extraction constraint, but because that's so built into the experience and performance companies in the west, many predictions completely misunderstand what is possible with a different focus. We'll see how fast this can be re-calibrated.

[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?