CRITICAL MINERALSCentral Asia Key to Breaking China's Rare Earth Monopoly

By Navbahor Imamova

U.S. officials hoping to break China’s near monopoly on the production of rare earth elements needed for many cutting-edge technologies should engage the governments of Central Asia to develop high concentrations of REEs found in the region, says a new report.

The study by the U.S.-based International Tax and Investment Center warns that a failure to act could leave China with a “decisive advantage” in the sector, which is crucial to green energy, many new weapons systems and other advanced technologies.

“As the uses for these minerals has expanded, so too has global competition for them in a time of sharply increasing geostrategic and geo-economic tension,” the report says.

“Advanced economies with secure, reliable access to REEs enjoy economic advantages in manufacturing, and corresponding economic disadvantages accrue for those without this access.”

China, which accounts for most of the world’s rare earth mining within its own borders, has not yet had to seek additional supplies from Central Asia, which enjoys plentiful reserves of minerals ranging from iron and nonferrous metals to uranium.

But, the report says, “the massive size of the Chinese economy and the Chinese Communist Party’s conscious efforts to dominate the REE sector globally mean such increases are a matter of time.”

Oil-rich Kazakhstan, the region’s economic giant, holds the world’s largest chromium reserves and the second-largest stocks of uranium, while also possessing other critical elements.

Report co-author Ariel Cohen says it is up to the governments of Central Asia to create the investment climate for development of these resources.

“They may be the next big thing in Central Asia as the engine of economic growth,” Cohen said this week during a panel discussion at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

Across Central Asia, experts note, REEs are found in substantial volumes in the Kazakh steppe and uplands as well as in the Tien Shan mountains across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and in the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan.

Monazite, zircon, apatite, xenotime, pyrochlore, allanite and columbite are among Central Asia’s most abundant rare metals and minerals.

In 2016, the U.S. Geological Survey listed 384 REE occurrences in the region: 160 in Kazakhstan, 87 in Uzbekistan, 75 in Kyrgyzstan, 60 in Tajikistan, and two in Turkmenistan.

Wesley Hill, another expert on Central Asia’s mineral reserves, says production of rare earths at present “is almost wholly monopolized by China.”