China corners vital market
By MICHAEL RICHARDSON In the race to build advanced industrial and military products, China has a key advantage: the world's biggest reserves of rare earth minerals that are essential to many of these products. China dominates mining of the obscure but strategically vital rare earth elements (REEs) used in an increasing array of commercial and defense applications, ranging from batteries, magnets and electric motors to satellites, lasers and precision-guided munitions. Last year China produced about 97 percent of the world's rare earth oxides. Just as important, Chinese companies, many of them state-controlled, now have a near monopoly on processing rare earth metals into finished materials. This stranglehold is starting to alarm the United States , Japan , the European Union and other major economies that depend on supplies from China . Since 2005, it has been restricting output and exports, pushing prices higher. The Pentagon is due to finish a report by the end of th...