In recent years, developed countries and regions such as Europe, the United States and Australia have paid more and more attention to key minerals. In 2017, the European Union listed 14 vital metal raw materials; in 2018, the United States announced 35 key minerals; in 2019, the Australian government, the Australian National Department of Industry and Technology Innovation, and the Australian National Trade and Investment Commission jointly issued The "Australia's Key Minerals Strategic 2019" lists a total of 24 resources as key mineral resources.
It can be seen that most of the "key metals" listed by western countries belong to strategic rare metals, which are short of resources for western countries. China's rare metal reserves for the world's first, known as the "rare metal kingdom".
In recent years, China has issued many regulations on the management of rare metals, but the effect is not ideal. This paper selects lithium (Li), antimony (Sb), tungsten (W), germanium (Ge), molybdenum (Mo), indium (In), tin (Sn), magnesium (Mg), rare earth (RE) a total of 9 kinds of rare metals which are listed as key minerals by many countries and are the dominant minerals in China as an example to explore the management policy of rare metals in China.
The Evolution of Rare Metal Management Policy in China
1) Protective mining system. In the early stage, the country set up protective minerals and implemented protective mining management for China's dominant minerals, mainly including tungsten, tin, antimony, rare earth and so on. For a long time, due to the inadequate management and other policies, there are a series of problems in the process of exploration and exploitation of these minerals. Therefore, the state has carried out special management for these minerals.
2) Export quota system. my country has implemented an export quota system for rare earths and other advantageous minerals. However, since January 5, 201, the Ministry of Commerce combined with the reform of the domestic rare metal resource management system and comprehensively considered the relevant rulings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and canceled the rare earths and other minerals. Export quota system.
3) Mining rights management system. As early as 1975, the State Council established the rare earth leading group (formerly known as the national rare earth development and application leading group), aiming to further strengthen the management of China's rare earth industry and ensure the development of China's rare earth industry. Since 1999, the former Ministry of Land and Resources has issued a document to suspend the processing of new prospecting rights or mining rights for rare earth mines, tungsten mines, antimony mines and other minerals for many years. At present, the new establishment of mining rights for various minerals has been liberalized, but it needs to be reported to the Ministry of Natural Resources.
4) Total mining control system. In March 2012, the former Ministry of Land and Resources began to implement a total mining control system. The minerals are dominant minerals such as tungsten and rare earths. A series of regulations were made on the determination and distribution of total mining control mineral indicators, the issuance of indicators, and indicator management.
This is the most important management measures taken by our country for the advantages of rare metal resources. The minerals that implement the total mining control system are mainly tungsten (since 2002), rare earth (since 2006) and antimony (2009-2013). Although the resource endowment of the genus is good, most of them are in the stage of overexploitation.
For example, China's tungsten reserves account for 61% of the world's total, while production accounts for 82%. This development model of "large production, large export and zero reserve" will lead to the cancellation of the control index management policy for antimony mining from 2014 onwards. According to the control effect, the implementation of total amount control has obvious control effect on the production of tungsten industry, and has certain effect on the regulation of rare earth market, but it has not fully achieved the expected goal, and there are still many phenomena of random mining.
The author believes that the main reason is that the production cost of comprehensive utilization of tungsten ore has an absolute advantage compared with the cost of main mining tungsten ore, so enterprises are more inclined to comprehensive utilization. Eventually, the comprehensive utilization output exceeds the standard, and the main tungsten mining index is more and more.
On the whole, the total amount of tungsten mining is not much. However, due to the relatively simple mining process, illegal mining has higher profits and strong market competitiveness compared with legal production. Therefore, compared with tungsten ore, the total amount control policy of rare earth restricts the mining of legal enterprises, but the control of illegal mining is not enough.
5) Industry access. In December 2006, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the industry access conditions for tungsten, tin and antimony, with the aim of realizing the rational development and utilization of China's advantageous resources and speeding up the upgrading of the industrial structure. In March 2011 and July 2012, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology respectively formulated the industry access conditions for magnesium and molybdenum to promote the sustainable and healthy development of the magnesium and molybdenum industries.
Lithium is also an important rare metal mineral that has emerged in recent years with the widespread application of lithium batteries. At present, there are no special lithium industry access conditions, only the Ministry of industry and information technology in January 2019 issued the "lithium ion battery industry standard conditions (2018 version)". Since lithium is mainly used to make lithium batteries, this document can be regarded as an industry specification for lithium resources.
Problems in the management of rare metals
From the perspective of the application fields of rare metals, they are mostly concentrated in important strategic sectors, which have important strategic significance for new energy, electronic devices, solar energy, aerospace and military industry [7]. As more and more countries include rare metal minerals as "key minerals" or "strategic minerals", the strategic position of these rare metals will become more and more important. However, China is the country with the most abundant rare metals in the world. At present, the management policy of rare metals is not perfect, so it is urgent to improve the relevant management system to improve the voice of China in the global rare metal supply and demand market.
On the whole, the management policy of rare metals in China has improved in recent years, but there are still some key problems that have not been solved.
1) At present, the management policies of rare metals are mostly concentrated on the minerals listed as protective minerals, such as tungsten, tin, antimony and rare earth. For metals such as molybdenum and germanium, they are also the dominant minerals in China, but there is almost no special management policy.
2) No mineral resources reserve system has been established. Although the resource endowment of rare metals in China is good, most of them are in the stage of overexploitation. For example, China's tungsten reserves account for 61% of the world's total, while production accounts for 82%. This "large-scale production, large exports, zero reserves" development model has led to China's rare metals guarantee period is lower than the global guarantee period, the resource advantage gradually weakened. On the other hand, low prices have led other resource countries to stop domestic production and import large quantities of resource products in our country.
3) China's rare metal products are mostly junior middle-level products, high-end products are weak in competition and rely heavily on imports, which leads to China's export of cheap resources and high-end products at high prices. For example, among the tungsten products exported by our country, primary and intermediate smelting products account for 70%, while high-end tungsten alloys need to be imported in large quantities. Another example is that China's indium resources (the main raw material for ITO production) account for 2/3 of the global indium resource reserves, but the utilization of indium resources is only in the stage of trial production or small batch production. Although Japan has no indium resources, however, four companies control more than 90% of the global ITO target market share.
4) The supervision of illegal mining is not enough. Through the above analysis of policies such as the total mining indicators of several minerals in my country, it can be seen that although some policies have been implemented, the supervision is not enough, and they often fail to achieve better management results.
thoughts and suggestions
According to the introduction of China's rare metal policy, the nine rare metals can be roughly divided into the following three gradients.
1) protective minerals, represented by tungsten, tin, rare earth and antimony. The state implements strict exploration and mining control over these minerals, such as total mining control, export quota system, industry access, order regulation, etc., and almost all policies give priority to serving such minerals to ensure that China's advantageous resources can be used economically and intensively.
2) elastic management of minerals, represented by molybdenum and magnesium. For this kind of minerals, the state's control is not as strict as that of protective minerals, but some policies will also be issued for special management. For example, there are industry access requirements for magnesium, and molybdenum has also been included in the feasibility study of protective minerals in recent years. The introduction of relevant policies has gradually increased compared with the past.
3) open type minerals, represented by germanium, indium and lithium. These minerals are also China's dominant strategic minerals, because the current situation is not as severe as the first two types of gradient minerals, the country has almost no policy specifically for this kind of rare metals. But the country also began to gradually pay attention to this kind of rare metal.
In view of the problems existing in the rare metal management policy in China, some suggestions are put forward in the policy design.
1) Fine management of strategic rare metals. For each mineral, a targeted management policy is developed. At present, the state has implemented special "care" for protective minerals, but there are relatively few control policies for other rare metals. As more and more countries list these rare metals as "key minerals", my country should pay attention to the strategic position of these rare metals in advance when formulating policies, formulate special management policies as soon as possible, and grasp the right to speak of strategic rare metals.
2) Establish a rare metal mineral reserve system. At present, there is no complete law to provide rigid support for China's mineral strategic reserve, and the rare metal reserve system is far away. Japan, as a big consumer of rare metals, although domestic rare metal resources are in short supply, it began to formulate a rare metal resource reserve system in 1974, and now it has formed a complete reserve system involving rare earth, nickel, molybdenum, tungsten and other metals. On the other hand, our country is rich in resources but extensive exploitation, resulting in waste of resources and failing to get the actual right to speak. It is suggested that China should learn from the successful experience of the United States, Japan and other developed countries, start with cultivating the awareness of resource reserve and perfecting the reserve policy, and gradually construct the policy system of rare metal resource reserve in China.
3) Strengthen the application technology of rare metal materials. At present, the core problem in China's rare metal industry is the technical problem. How to make the rare metal industry bigger and stronger, and how to lead the rare metal industry from low-end products to high-end product applications are important issues that policy makers need to consider.
The first is to encourage the development of domestic strategic rare metal high-end industrial projects to increase investment opportunities; the second is to establish cooperative relations with foreign core technology countries, learn from each other, and complement each other's advantages; the third is to increase research and development efforts to seek some high efficiency and cost Low and environmentally friendly core technology breakthroughs.
4) Improve the regulations and policies on the supervision and supervision of rare metals, and strictly supervise the rare metal industry. In 1996, China promulgated the Coal Law of the people's Republic of China, which made clear and specific provisions on the development and utilization, production, safety supervision and resource protection of coal production.
In terms of rare metal industry supervision, only tungsten industry has an effective regulatory system, which is better than rare earth, molybdenum and other industries. It is suggested that the supervision regulations on rare metals should be promulgated as soon as possible, starting from the aspects of "controlling chaos", "controlling dispersion" and "curing the root cause", severely cracking down on illegal mining activities, and effectively regulating the development order of rare metals.