This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Julie Klinger, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware’s Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, about rare earths — a family of 17 elements that are essential to the function of modern industry and are indispensable in everyday technology. Julie debunks many of the myths surrounding China and rare earths, and lays out her ideas about why, despite the relative ubiquity of mineable rare earth deposits, China has dominated production of these vitally important minerals for decades.
3:00: Debunking conventional wisdom on China and rare earths
9:55: What are rare earths and how important are they
21:30: How China’s near-monopoly on rare earths came to be
32:49: Mining and environmental degradation
45:32: China’s decision to slow down rare earth production and its consequences
Recommendations:
Julie: Going outside for the sake of going outside, and The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life, by Jamie Lorimer.
Kaiser: “The chip choke point,” by Tim De Chant, in The Wire China (listen to the article on China Stories).
China's space program, with NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao
China and the American "great power opportunity," with Ali Wyne
Another Taiwan Straits Crisis? CIA veteran John Culver weighs in
The Sinica Network presents the Café & Seda (Coffee & Silk) Podcast
Prototype Nation: Silvia Lindtner on what drives Chinese tech innovation, and how tech drives Chinese statecraft
Semiconductors and the unspoken U.S. tech policy on China, with Paul Triolo
Historian Andrew Liu on COVID origins: Orientalism and the "Asiatic racial form"
Yale's Jing Tsu on the characters who modernized Chinese characters
Taiwan: Saber rattling, salami slicing, and strategic ambiguity, with Shelley Rigger and Simona Grano
A Comprehensive Mirror: James Carter's "This Week in China's History" column marks two years
Mental health under lockdown: A clinical psychologist in Shanghai
Covering the U.S.-China relations beat with the FT's Demetri Sevastopulo
Too much of a good thing? Connectivity and the age of "unpeace," with the ECFR's Mark Leonard
The rise and fall of U.S.-China scientific collaboration, with Deborah Seligsohn
Chinese public opinion on the Russo-Ukrainian War, with Yawei Liu and Danielle Goldfarb
China and India share a contested border and an uncomfortable neutrality in the Ukraine War — but not much else
China, Europe, and the Russo-Ukrainian War, with Marina Rudyak
Inside the Shanghai lockdown, with SupChina's own Chang Che
After the War: Scenarios China faces when the Russo-Ukrainian War eventually ends
Susan Thornton on the urgent need for diplomacy with China over the Russo-Ukraine War
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