Is that structural or cultural do you think?
There is a reason why West Taiwan has a stock pile of rare earths.
The processing of rare earths is NOT environmental friendly by any means.
In Australia, Lynas Rare Earths digs up the raw product then sends it to a processing plant in Indonesia or Malaysia for that reason i.e. Australia environmental laws may not approve local processing.
Mostly cultural I reckon, but not sure as it is even hard to start dialogue with these groups.
When we first started making our own products, the plan was to go for our local market first, especially as there was a major application market in mining. I still do not understand the reason, but as soon as customers became aware that it was made in Australia from locally developed by CSIRO , interest waned. We sold our first units in Europe, then USA, and our first Australian customer was CSIRO ! I have retired from the business but they still struggle locally.
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Processing rare earth is a multistage purification to get required purity levels for use. So factories are expensive and take 5 years to build. It is not usually the process that is the issue but purification creates radioactive waste, so storing this is the problem. Lynas do some processing in WA and I believe send their waste to Malaysia.
Not sure about environmental regulations in Malaysia but I know many miners take scant regard of waste disposal in many outside of Australia places. We did lots of work in gold mines in PNG, and many areas are now toxic, surrounding sea heavily polluted and Authorities ignore it, because they paid to.
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What an absolute environmental and social farking disaster. Any sensible person telling the world we need to stop mining and only recycle the stuff weâve already dug up would be labelled a lunatic. The economic cost of managing this toxic shitt adds to GDP and is considered progress.
The only question being asked at govt level is âhow can we get more of this stuff out of the ground?â
Zero chance humans survive long enough to find a way off this planet before we make it uninhabitable for us and many other species. The cockroaches will be ok and will probably be better governors.
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There is no way we are going to colonize Mars in our lifetime, I donât believe we will even get someone there. It is another Musk scam.
very much agree with the first statement and over a longer time frame.
I loved the docu-drama âMARSâ and that seemed to present some of the engineering challenges and the importance of finding water. But terraforming an entire planet seems ludicrous, especially given our experience of destroying this planetâs ecosystems.
But psychologically I donât think we are capable of accepting that our species will end when earth can no longer support human life, so I guess weâll keep trying to get off planet.
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One does not follow the other. We are friends with plenty of dictatorships. China is adversarial as its pushes its influence on the worldâs politicians, governments and economies. There are human rights abuses too, but you donât need to look far to find them elsewhere.
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USA has the âNIHâ policy. Of course that doesnât mean âNational Institutes of Healthâ, which have a budget of billions, but âNot Invented Hereâ. That means: not US = no good.
Australian VCs have honoured this by saying âIf its not invented in the USA, it must be no goodâ.
I have literally been told: âIf your tech was real it would have already been publlished by Stanford or Harvardâ
So we get the worst of both worlds.
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I would take that very personally and probably do harm to the wanker who suggested it.
We did actually start making our product in Texas so we could stamp it Made in USA, even had Australian mining company want to buy it from USA.
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That is quite brilliant work by Keating. Pity he didnât get the love he deserved from Australian people, his mind is still as sharp as it ever was. It also shows how poor journalism in this country is.
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LOL. Hypocritical, much?
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Oops
My understanding of Taiwan control -
Pre 1680 - independent controlled by indigenous Taiwanese
1680 - 1895 - Qing Dynasty
1895 - 1945 - Japanese control
1945+ ROC/Taiwan
ie no rule over Taiwan from the Chinese mainland since 1895! A lot has happened since then.
Anybody who equates this to automatic PRC/CCP ownership and control has a predetermined agenda. ie 200 years of Qing Dynasty control doesnât mean it naturally and rightfully belongs to China, as that is a small timeline in the history of the island.
At the very least itâs ambiguous. Everything else is CCP propaganda.
The right thing to do is to look at their current identity which is Taiwanese nationality and Chinese ethnicity.
The idea that needs to be squashed is that somehow this is a Chinese internal issue. It is not.
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Also, for the CCP it is expedient to reference pre-1949 history when talking about historical land-claims but with other issues, not so much.
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About 15 years ago when l was living and working in China, l was told that America was in debt to China to the tune of over 1 trillion, due to largely to the balance of trade in Beijingâs favour.
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