CIndustrial 2.7 million pesos ChinaFeels like a second-second-tier Chinese city. Great shopping malls featuring Western chains between Starbucks and KFC standing in the street of the local restaurants, where people sit outside and children play late in the evening, after darkness in the inner Mongolia in the baking, who come after darkness in the inner Mongolia in the baking summer.
But a short drive in the city of suburban another typical, less hospital, the Chinese scene. Factories in the crowd in the margins with the chimneys blanking white feature smoke. Then steel and silicon plants, Baotou’s home to China’s monopoly in the rare world, the metallic elements that are in oil refining equipment and car batteries will become a major sticking point in US-China Trade War.
More than 80% of China’s rare land reserves in Baotou. Metals to Cerium and Lanthanus are crucial for modern technologies ranging from the football screens to the vehicle braking systems. Some rare land to SamariumIn the military-degree of magnetets between us.
What did they make them helpful for a chip for beijing in a trade war. China has a long time to embassify Washington’s Advanced Semiconductors at China, and now seems to be returning in the race by dropping the western manufacturers from critical elements in their supply chain.
In April, Beijing Restricted in Export of many rare world, before the Restingens Export Licenses for several post Recent London talks.
The restrictions have already had a global effect with shallow at a time closing a car device in Chicago for a shortage. The Monday, Ford Executive said The company is living “hands to the bone” to get his factory to open. In Fire Last week, the President of European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, accused China from “weaponising” dominante rara world supply chain. Access to the commodities of the match top of the action for Valium EU-China top.
An economic boon or environmental hazard
Rare lands were central to life in Baotou for a long time before regions’s grams of global headlines.
In the metals and first found in China in Bayan OBO, a mining District 150km North Baotou in 1930s. But the production is not directed to the 1990s, when China entered at the time of the rapid economic reform and open up. Between 1990 and 2000, China’s production increased by 450% to 73,000 metric tonnes. At the same time, in other countries, namely the US, declined, giving China near Monopoly in the global amount. In 2024, the government’s quota for rare land production was 270,000 tolnes. The Bayan Obo Mining District now closely guarded the city of people living in the shadow of a huge mines and toxic waste products.
Baootou of the rich reserves natural resources have been good to the economy. The City GDP per capita is 165,000 yuan (£ 17,000) compared with the National average of 95,700 yuan, although the locals murmur of Economic SlowDownThat’s affecting the whole. According to the State of the Center, the year to industry generated more than 100bn yuan to the city for the first time. But energy also has an environmental impact.
Toxic, often radioactive byproducts of rare earthquake of the earth processing are dumped in a man, he made the ditches that “tailings pools.” One of the most notoriosa tailings pools in the area of Weikuang tailings mother of his own possessors from the state-owned Baogang group. For many years of the world’s biggest dumping ground for rare earth to destroy products. Not correctly instructed and there are fears of The toxic contents septing in the groundwater and the next yellow riverA major source of drinking water to the northern China. According to Ministry for Ecology and Environment, Clean-Up Project of yellow River in tributaries in Baotou exit in the levels of ammonia nitrogen, rare the world processing byproduct, decreased by 87% between 2024.
In 2000s and 2010, research in the villagers around Baotou Revealed orthopedic problems, Christmas defects and in “Epidemic” Cancer. Because microscopic rare elements can cross the blood-brain sticker and deposit in the brain, exposure was linked to the number of neurological problems such as motor and sensual of the fetus in pregnant women.
A study published in 2020 to be found in Baotou are especially likely to be exposed to the rare land elements by the way of the dust, the researchers described as a “serious danger.” Another study found that daily intake of airborne rare earth elements in metal areas up to 6.7mg, as well as above 4.2 mg level is considered relatively safe.
“Large-scale extraction quite often in the expense of health and well-being of the surrounding companies, pretty much in the context,” the Julie Klinger, the rare earth.
Although technologies to the process of rare in the minus environmentally harmful ways to exist in theory, they are rarely due to the cost.
“I doubt not to place their production costs if you took such a step,” says Craig Craig, a lecturer to John Hopkins University who focuses on the rare earth.
Cleaning in Baotou
Environmentalists note that part of the reason that China has been able to dominate global supplies of rare earths at competitive prices is because, as well as being rich in natural resources, it has also been willing to let poor, rural people bear the Brunt of the toxic, dirty work. But now China wants to clean up the picture.
In 2022, the state of the Baotou’s Major Tailings Lake with transformed in Urban Wetland. Birdwatchers could come and enjoy the pristine waters of the new purified pool, which seems attracted a range of migrating birds. When the guardian visited position of the new birders of the paradise is the most of the site is blocked by a view behind a newly built a wall. Peek on the wall revealed to support dry mud. About the area remains once notorios’ cancer streets “scattered among the rowers pipes and diverse. One overgrown, leaving the dumpling restaurant was only that the communities are used to live with.
In the place of another village at the cited locally and having particularly high cancer rates, a large silicon factory occupied area.
It’s not clear where residents are at. A nearby, recently built complex multi-thesay apartment buildings appeared to be housing for placing the time, few of the groughts streets. Local police is physically blocked by the guardian of the spoke to some residents around the lanes.
Baootou’s local government doesn’t respond to a request to comment.