Is China's rare earth monopoly already unbreakable? - ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

China controls as much as 95–99% of the world's heavy rare earth processing.

Your phone, your car, the wind turbines on the horizon, the F-35 fighter jet; all of them run on permanent magnets made from a handful of obscure elements, and nearly every gram of it passes through Chinese hands before it reaches the rest of the world. 

Beijing didn't seize this position overnight. It's the result of three decades of Western capital and regulation walking away from an industry China chose to dominate. 

Now, with export freezes already hitting Japan and rattling European car makers, analyst and author Tomasz Nadrowski explains how deep the West's dependency really runs and whether Australia's own rare earth deposits can help close the gap before it's too late.

Guest: Tomasz Nadrowski, author of Mineral War: China's Quest for Weapons of Mineral Destruction. 

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Geraldine Doogue and Latika Bourke: decoding the world's biggest stories, one conversation at a time.