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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Arran Yuan who wrote (218479)	12/15/2025 12:23:54 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218539

Almost on the dot, part of TeoTwawKi happenings

To: Arran Yuan who wrote (218479)	12/15/2025 6:45:36 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218539

re <<advance>>, and economic consequences shall follow, a guess scmp.com Why China’s growing demand for rare-earth steel is bad news for US F-35 Advanced product is used in huge infrastructure projects but that has further reduced supply for overseas buyers like the US defence sector Zhang Tongin Beijing Published: 9:00pm, 15 Dec 2025Updated: 9:43pm, 15 Dec 2025 At a sprawling industrial complex in the Inner Mongolian city of Baotou, workers feed bag after bag of rare-earth additives into roaring furnaces, turning ordinary steel into a high-performance alloy worth twice as much. This is the front line of a technological leap being powered by China’s dominance in critical minerals and its strategic industrial policy. The advanced rare-earth steel being produced is used in the country’s most ambitious engineering projects – from high-speed railways to wind turbines and the world’s largest hydropower dam being built in Tibet, according to a report in the official Science and Technology Daily. Advertisement But growing demand for rare earths in China’s steel industry – in addition to Beijing’s export controls – has reduced the supply to overseas buyers even further. China has a stranglehold on rare earths, which are needed for everything from electric cars to electronics and defence technologies. China accounts for about 70 per cent of the world’s rare-earth mining and 90 per cent of processing. Advertisement In the United States, the defence sector – including the F-35 fighter jet programme, nuclear submarines, missiles and drones – has been grappling with supply chain anxieties fuelled by the shortage of rare earths. The F-35 fighter jet upgrade has been delayed. Photo: Reuters China announced export controls on seven categories of rare-earth-related items in April, as trade tensions with the US flared. Advertisement At least four of them – gadolinium, terbium, yttrium and dysprosium – are widely used in subsystems and components of advanced US military aircraft, and the Pentagon said in September that the F-35 upgrade known as Block 4 would not be completed until 2031, five years later than planned. Some 36 per cent of the world’s light rare-earth reserves – used for electronics, green energy and defence – are found in the vast mining district of Bayan Obo in Inner Mongolia. It is located about 120km (75 miles) north of the industrial city of Baotou, where state-owned Baotou Steel Union Co has been researching and developing rare-earth steel for more than half a century. Advertisement BSU technical executive Wu Pengfei told Science and Technology Daily on December 8 that the company had “successfully merged rare earth and steel production”. “It now makes 33 varieties of rare-earth steel, boosting value by 3,000 yuan [US$425] per tonne and creating more than 3.6 billion yuan [US$510.2 million] in extra yearly income,” Wu was quoted as saying. Research into integrating rare earths with steel began during World War II. Adding rare earths to steel helps to purify molten steel, refine the grain structure and improve its microstructure. It can improve corrosion resistance, reaction to low-temperature impact, and weldability. BSU has worked with leading research institutes and universities to develop rare-earth steel including the Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Northeastern University, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the Central Iron & Steel Research Institute. The company said in October that it had an annual output of 1.5 million tonnes of high-end rare-earth steel products that were used in some major infrastructure projects in China and overseas. They include the steel rails in the Budapest-Belgrade railway, the China-Laos Railway and the Baotou-Yinchuan High-Speed Railway. Advertisement Rare-earth steel has also been used in solar power projects in Alxa League and Ulan Buh, in Inner Mongolia. And it has been used in pipelines for energy arteries like the China-Russia East Gas Pipeline and the West-East Gas Pipeline. In July, BSU secured a huge order for 62,000 tonnes of rare-earth steel for the Yarlung Tsangpo River hydropower project. Advertisement Billed as the world’s biggest hydropower dam, it is located in a high-altitude environment where temperatures plunge as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit) – conditions too harsh for ordinary steel to withstand. Beijing has been pushing the development of high-end rare-earth steel products. An “action plan” released by several ministries in 2018 called for improved standards for composition, processing and quality to expand rare-earth applications in the steel industry. Meanwhile, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region’s Department of Science and Technology last year issued a plan calling for 30 industry innovation bodies to be established by 2027. Advertisement Analysts have noted that China’s vast railway, power and renewable energy projects create huge demand for advanced rare-earth materials, which allows companies to test and improve their technology. The US, in contrast, has less demand for these products which slows down progress in the technology as well as cost efficiency.