[Ferro-Alloys.com] Policy Brief: The UK and ChinaCritical Minerals

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Critical minerals are minerals considered essential to the economic and national security of a country, where the supply chain is vulnerable to disruption and shortages would pose a serious risk to the economy. They are the building block of a transition to clean energy.

The combination of decarbonising our energy sector with renewables, the shift to electric vehicles and the creation of a flexible energy storage system will substantially increase the UK’s demand for critical minerals.

Global demand for critical minerals is set to soar in the next two decades. As a result, a race to secure supplies of critical minerals is under way.

One nation has a huge head start. China dominates the refining and processing of critical minerals, controlling up to 90% of this stage of the midstream of the supply chain. While its dominance was partly fuelled by Western offshoring, the Chinese government has systematically supported its rare earths industry with strategic industrial policy.

This raises clear concerns of strategic dependence at a time when Beijing is deepening its state control of the rare earths industry. This is compounded by the ethical questions of opaque supply chains and environmental issues of high-carbon supply chains.

China’s strategy is evolving. In 2020, the country became the world’s largest importer of seven types of rare earths, symbolising a shift to offshoring low-value mining and focusing on the higher-value midstream processing and downstream manufacturing.

Reducing dependence on China will be tricky. Critical minerals are likely to play an increasingly important role in the Belt and Road, further complicating attempts to reduce dependence on China. Chinese state-backed companies have also taken stakes in leading Western rare earths mining companies, many of which sell their concentrate back to China for processing.

The state model is here to stay. The bulk of actors are benefitting from significant state support, including our like-minded partners, such as the US and Australia. Most developed industrial economies are seeking to build regionalised or domestic sovereign supply chains as a matter of national security.

In the face of China’s dominance and rising state-backed competition for access to critical minerals, the UK needs a resilience-focused strategy in order to protect its manufacturing base and national security.

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• [Editor:tianyawei]