China and Japan Covet the Same Rare-Earth Metals

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Australian: "Japan's increasingly frantic efforts to lead the world in green technology have put it on a collision course with the ambitions of China and dragged both government and industry into the murky realm of large-scale mineral smuggling."

WOW!

[__aaclcg7560]

A rare-earth metal so rare that it doesn't even have a name without RTFA.

Shame...

[cffrost]

If only Japan coveted lead, they could come to some arrangement.

"large-scale mineral smuggling"?

[Norsefire]

Like buying gold in WoW?

the 1950's called

[timmarhy]

it's time to start checking under your beds for communists kids.

Re:rare-earths

[noundi]

You do understand, of course, the astronomic (pun intended) price of the resources mined in the asteroid belt?

You know what? [thebestpag...iverse.net]

Re:China's bastnasite and monazite supply for magn

[iamdrscience]

Wikipedia is not a reliable source

[citation needed]

Re:WOW!

[SlashWombat]

If the Chinese have their way, it will all be named unobtanium.

Re:Great!

[gzunk]

I'm sorry, but as a native English speaker I had no problems reading the sentence and understanding that it was a point of view. It doesn't even look like a fact.

Or maybe I should rephrase that as:

I think I'm sorry, but as I believe I'm a native English speaker I didn't perceive that I had any problems in understanding that it might have been a point of view. In my view, it didn't look like a fact. :-)