Yes, but even if the Chinese government is deliberately subsidizing the current low prices of the commodity, odds are that the Chinese people will never realize the monopoly increased price. They subsidize the price, millions of people around the world get cheap goods for years, then they try to jack up the price and suddenly the workarounds start coming.
Of course, it could easily be that certain people in China will make truckloads of money from this. But the truckloads of money will be mostly at the expense of the Chinese taxpayers, not world consumers.
I’m pretty sure Mongolia has at leasrt as much supply as China. And no love lost between the 2 countries. Mongolia is just opening up it’s natural resources on a large scale.
I don’t think the idea is to make a fortune later with monopoly prices for the materials themselves. ISTM like a way for a more controlled economy to compete with the likes of the USA in an emerging industry.
Correct me if this seems off-base. By subsidizing these materials, everyone else is satisfied buying from them rather than developing their own resources. Down the road when the inevitable oil price spikes return (I’ve heard Chinese oil demand is growing at 8x our rate), suddenly demand for hybrids and evs skyrockets. Plus, as stricter controls on greenhouse gasses are put in place, demand for wind turbines increses. China quits exporting the materials.
In this scenario, the groups that haven’t developed their rare earth resources are promptly driven out of the green tech game, and China gets established as a big exporter of evs and turbines. Maybe this only lasts for a decade, but how long would an energy revolution take anyway?
ETA: Great article btw, mswas.