China tightens export rules for decisive rare lands

China has tightened control of exports of rare land and other materials critical of modern technology production as trade negotiations continue with the United States.

It cultivates about 90% of the rare lands in the world that go into everything from solar panels to smartphones – a key chip to negotiate before the expected meeting between Chinese leader Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump this month.

Beijing has already limited the processing technology and unauthorized cooperation abroad, but the announcement of Thursday formalizes the rules.

Foreign companies now need the approval of the Chinese government to export products with even small quantities of rare land and need to explain their intended use.

The ministry has announced similar restrictions on lithium batteries and some forms of graphite, which are also the main components in the global technology supply chain and largely manufactured in China.

Beijing said the regulations are intended to “protect national security”. One of the main goals of these controls seems to be manufacturers of defense defense, including those in the United States, which rely on rare lands from China.

China had added several rare lands and related materials to its list of export control in April, as the trade war with Washington has grown, causing a major global shortage.

But the new message is clear that licenses are unlikely to be issued to weapons manufacturers and certain companies in the chip industry.

Even the technology used to pass and cultivate rare lands or make magnets from rare lands can only be exported with permission from the government, said the Ministry of Trade.

Chinese companies are also forbidden to work with foreign companies in rare land without government permission.

The latest message also clarifies the specific technologies and processes that are limited.

These include extraction, melting and separation, production of magnetic materials and recycling of rare lands from other resources.

The assembly, the troubleshooting, the maintenance, repair and upgrading of production equipment is also prohibited from exporting without permission, the message adds.

This could have a great influence in the United States, which has a significant rare industry for land production, but there are no facilities for cultivation.

The new provisions create Beijing’s version of US rules that block the countries of selling chips to China.

The United States has used these measures to slow down China’s development of powerful chips that could be used for artificial intelligence (AI) with military applications.

Sales expert Alex Capri believes that the new provisions of China “are” specifically from time to time “before the expected meeting of the SI and Trump later this month.

Beijing is aimed at key vulnerabilities in the production of electronics and weapons in the United States, reflecting America’s more movements against the Chinese chip industry, he added.

Rare lands are a group of 17 chemically similar elements that are crucial for the production of very high -tech products.

Most are abundant in nature, but are known as “rare” because it is very unusual to find them in pure form and are very dangerous to extract.

Although you may not be familiar with the names of these rare lands – such as Neodymium, Yttrium and Europium – you will be very familiar with the products in which they are used.

For example, Neodymium is used to make powerful magnets used in speakers, computer hard drives, electric cars and jet engines that allow them to be smaller and more efficient.

China has almost a monopoly on the extraction of rare lands, as well as their refinement – which is the process of separating them from other minerals.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that China represents about 61% of the production of rarely earthly earthly and 92% of their processing.

Additional reporting from Ian Tang from BBC monitoring