Chinese government restricts foreign access to mineral reserves

Beijing reserves its resources
The Australian – Business, Sydney – November 12, 2007

WHILE we keep happily digging up our metals and shipping them out, the Chinese are taking a slightly longer term view. The Ministry of Commerce and the National Development Reform Commission have reclassified China’s tungsten, molybdenum, tin, antimony and fluorite as being in the “prohibited category”.

What this means is that no foreign company can get involved in mining these metals. Add this to earlier moves to raise export taxes on metals and the message from Beijing is clear: you westerners can exhaust your deposits and in 50 years we’ll still have ours.

13. November 2007 by
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