In 2021, a more than 70-year-old mine in California’s Mojave Desert will become the center of an effort to revive an American mineral refining system that some say is critical to the country’s national security. At issue is the availability of rare-earth metals, which are needed for hybrid electric cars, smartphones and certain types of military equipment.  In fact, the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act directs most Pentagon systems to use rare earth metals that have been mined and refined outside of China within five years and dictates that the federal government give preference to U.S. suppliers of these materials in government acquisitions.As part of the U.S. government’s strategy to ensure safe and reliable supplies of critical minerals, the Defense Department has recently announced contracts and agreements with several rare-earth element producers. Among them is MP Materials, owner and operator of Mountain Pass mine, the only rare earth mining site in North America.Seventeen elements deemed critical to modern society were discovered at the Mountain Pass deposit, which, shortly after its discovery by American engineers in 1949, came to provide more than half of the world’s needs for rare earth minerals.FILE – Samples of rare earth minerals from left, Cerium oxide, Bastnasite, Neodymium oxide and Lanthanum carbonate are on display during a tour of Molycorp’s Mountain Pass Rare Earth facility in Mountain Pass, California, June 29, 2015.In recent decades, however, China has gradually gained a near-monopoly on these precious metals, controlling about 80% of the global supply chain even though it is home to only a third of the world’s rare earth reserves, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. That is largely due to the country’s domination in processing.As the U.S. has lost almost all its processing capacity to China, the ore mined in California must be sent to China for processing, making the mine essentially a supplier for the Chinese rare earths industry.Lost processing capacityAlthough they are called rare, these elements aren’t so uncommon on Earth. According to the USGS, the elements, while initially considered rare, “are relatively abundant in the Earth’s crust.”In its 2020 annual report, the government agency said although some 20 countries worldwide are currently mining rare earths, the U.S., with its 1.4 million-ton reserve, remains home to one of the largest rare earth deposits in the world.While U.S. bedrock contains an estimated 100 years’ worth of deposits at its current annual consumption rate, China is home to nearly all the world’s processing capacity to convert the ores into materials that manufacturers can use.”The processing has always been the gap through which China has been able to kind of come to dominate rare earth metal production,” said Felix K. Chang, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.”The big bottleneck is the process capacity,” said Martijn Rasser, a senior researcher at the Center for New American Security in Washington.FILE – Matt Green, mining/crushing supervisor at MP Materials, displays crushed ore before it is sent to the mill at the MP Materials rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California, Jan. 30, 2020.Mountain Pass revivalSince its 2002 closure as a result of environmental restrictions and competition from Chinese suppliers, there have been several attempts to revive the legendary Mountain Pass mine.In 2008, a privately held company called Molycorp Minerals was formed to reopen the site. For a few years the effort looked promising when Beijing restricted rare earth exports to Japan over a diplomatic dispute in 2010. The prices of rare earth on the international market were up and Molycorp’s stock soared.  However, after China started to increase rare earth exports in 2013, the company was struggling to stay solvent. By 2015, the company declared bankruptcy and was reorganized as the Toronto-based chemical manufacturing company Neo Performance Materials with processing facilities in the United States and six other countries, including four plants in China.The U.S., however, maintains high hopes for open-pit deposit on the southern flank of California’s Clark Mountain Range. Among grants worth roughly $13 million the Department of Defense awarded to the three companies, MP Materials, which acquired Mountain Pass in 2017, received the largest amount of approximately $9.6 million.On the other hand, the much-needed federal investment also could end up benefiting China as well as a Chinese rare earth manufacturer. Shenghe Resources Holdings owns about 10% of MP Materials. According to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, one of the MP Materials’ businesses is to “sell its rare earth concentrate products to Shenghe for further distribution to various downstream refiners in China.”Dr. William A. Saxton, founder and chairman emeritus of the American NGO Citizens for National Security, says among the many problems that U.S. faces in reviving the industry are environmental concerns.”We can mine, but we cannot process it because there are several problems, one of which is the problem of toxic waste,” Saxton told VOA in a telephone interview. He said hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land were withdrawn from exploration, and increased regulations caused the granting of multiple permits to take from seven to 10 years.Improving on that timetable, he said, will require overcoming objections from environmental organizations and government agencies.This story originated in VOA’s Mandarin Service.
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Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy advocate Jimmy Lai is heading back to detention after the city’s highest court revoked his bail Thursday.     The 73-year-old Lai was arrested on December 3 and spent three weeks behind bars before posting a $1.2 million bond just last week.  The High Court banned him from using Twitter, granting interviews or colluding with foreign forces in its ruling.   But judges with the city’s Court of Final Appeal agreed with prosecutors’ argument that the lower court’s decision to grant Lai bail was erroneous. The Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily criticized Lai’s bail in an editorial published Sunday, claiming the decision damaged Hong Kong’s “rule of law.” The owner of Next Digital media company was initially charged with fraud, with prosecutors accusing him of violating terms of the company’s lease of its office space.  Lai has since been charged under Hong Kong’s new national security law for “foreign collusion.”       Lai was first arrested under the new law on suspicion of foreign collusion in August.  Hours after his arrest, more than 100 police officers raided the headquarters of Next Digital, which publishes the newspaper Apple Day.  The newspaper livestreamed the raid on its website, showing officers roaming the newsroom as they rummaged through reporters’ files, while Lai was led through the newsroom in handcuffs.      Lai was eventually released on bail after 40 hours in custody.   Lai is already in legal jeopardy for his pro-democracy activism.  He was one of 15 activists arrested earlier this year and hit with seven charges, including organizing and participating in unauthorized assemblies and inciting others to take part in an unauthorized assembly.        He is one of the highest-profile Hong Kongers targeted by the new security law since it went into effect in July.  Under the law, anyone in Hong Kong believed to be carrying out terrorism, separatism, subversion of state power or collusion with foreign forces could be tried and face life in prison if convicted.          The new law was imposed by Beijing in response to the massive and often violent pro-democracy demonstrations that engulfed the financial hub in the last half of last year, and is the cornerstone of its increasing grip on the city, which was granted an unusual amount of freedom when Britain handed over control in 1997. 
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Laos is preparing to build what will be its seventh of nine planned large-scale Mekong river mainstream dams, the latest project in its controversial economic strategy to become the “battery of Southeast Asia,” sources in the country told RFA.The 728-megawatt Phou Ngoy Dam, with a projected completion date of 2029, would join the currently operational Xayaburi and Don Sahong dams as well as the Pak Beng, Pak Lay, Luang Prabang and Sanakham dams, in various stages of planning. Two others, Pak Chom and Ban Koum, are on the horizon after that.“The initial environmental and social impact study for this dam has just been approved, however, the project still needs a lot more study,” an official of the Energy and Mines Department of Champassak province in the country’s deep south told RFA’s Lao Service on Dec. 23.“With regard to relocation of villagers, we haven’t talked about it yet. We haven’t discussed about when and where the affected villagers will be moved to,” said the official, who requested anonymity to speak freely.The official said that the dam is an integral part of the government’s strategic development plan.“The Lao government is determined to build this dam,” the official said.He said the project has not been submitted to the Mekong River Commission (MRC) to undergo the Prior Consultation and Agreement (PNPCA) process yet “because the detailed environmental and social impact study is not yet complete.”The MRC is an inter-government agency that works with regional governments to manage the Mekong’s resources.Laos submitted the Sanakham Dam for PNPCA approval in May and the agreement is expected to be completed in mid-2021, after which the new dam’s plan will be submitted, the official said.’We don’t want to be relocated’In a common refrain heard in Laos, residents of the affected area told RFA they were opposed to yet another Mekong River dam.“Some time ago they conducted a survey asking us about our property, about our shops and fruit trees,” a resident of Khonken village in the province’s Champassak district told RFA.“We haven’t heard anything about relocation. We don’t want to be relocated. We don’t know where we’ll be moved to. We’ve been here for generations and we believe that this is our permanent home,” the resident said.Repeated accounts of villagers displaced by dam projects ending up poorer than they started has made him and his neighbors worried about their quality of life after resettlement, the villager said.The residents of Khonken are mostly farmers who grow rice and vegetables or raise livestock. Some run small businesses like restaurants and guesthouses that cater to tourists, mostly from neighboring Thailand.They fear that the dam would inundate the area’s biggest attractions, rapids on the Mekong river and beaches on its banks.The entire village will likely be relocated, affecting of 142 households, or about 800 residents.A second resident of Champassak district told RFA that many villagers are asking the government to reconsider the Phou Ngoy Dam project.“The government is building these dams for money, but this one will destroy the beauty of nature and our property,” the resident said.“I heard about the dam project. We told them we don’t want this dam,” another resident told RFA.Including Khonken, the $2.4-billion project would affect more than 200 hectares of land, home to 88 villages in seven districts. The most affected village would be Khon Ken village, where 811 residents reside in 142 households according to the project’s feasibility studies.Though no power purchase agreement (PPA) has been signed, two South Korean construction companies, Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction and Korea Western Power, have been tapped to build the dam between 2022 and 2029 in cooperation with Charoen Energy and Water Asia (CEWA) entities connected to the Thai and Lao governments.Thai concernsWith the Mekong river marking half of the 1,845-kilometer border between Laos and Thailand, Thai citizens affected by projects complain to Bangkok.“We’re monitoring this project closely. The company has not sent us all the information,” Dr. Somkiat Prajamwong, secretary-general to the Office of the National Water Resources of Thailand, told RFA.“After the Sanakham Dam PNPCA is complete, we’ll look at the Phou Ngoy Dam. If built, the dam might affect the Thai side. The water might overflow into Thai territory,” he said.Prajamwong noted that the dam would be only 18 kilometers south of Pakse, the capital of Laos’ Champassak province, where more than 100,000 people live. It will also be only 50 kilometers from the confluence of the Mun and Mekong Rivers in Thailand’s Sisaket province.Laos has built dozens of hydropower dams on the Mekong and its tributaries under its “Battery of Southeast Asia” vision, with ultimate plans for scores more hoping to export the electricity they generate to other countries in the region.Though the Lao government sees power generation as a way to boost the country’s economy, the projects are controversial because of their environmental impact, displacement of villagers without adequate compensation, and questionable financial and power demand arrangements.Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong. 
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