The Evolution Trend Of Overseas Rare Earth Supply Chain Resilience And China’s Countermeasures Under The Background Of “De-Sinicization”

Rare earths are called industrial vitamins,modern oxygen and treasury of new materials,which are key raw materials for strategic emerging industries and are widely used in national defense,clean energy technology and other national economic industries.The setting of carbon peaks and carbon neutral goals has promoted the transition from fossil energy to clean energy in countries around the world,which has increased the supply risk of rare earths and intensified the global competition for rare earths.In addition,the Sino-US economic and trade frictions and the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic have accelerated the restructuring of the global supply chain and the “de-sinicization” process,which makes the dominant position of China’s rare earths in the global supply chain be greatly challenged.In this context,an in-depth discussion of the evolution progress,influencing factors,evolution trend of overseas rare earth supply chain resilience and China’s countermeasures is of great significance to safeguarding the global trade interests and competitive position of China’s rare earth.This paper constructs a set of indicators for evaluating the rare earth supply chain resilience outside China,and comprehensively uses event sequence analysis,semi-structured interviews,complex network analysis,random and deliberate attacks,cascading failure model and other qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the resilience of overseas Nd Fe B permanent magnet supply chain.This paper uses grounded theory,semi-structured interviews and system GMM model to build a theoretical model of the influencing factors of Nd Fe B permanent magnet supply chain resilience outside China,and quantitatively examine the influencing direction and strength of key factors.Based on the dynamic material flow model,the key influencing factors,the results of supply chain resilience assessment,and system dynamics model to simulate the future evolution trend of the resilience of the overseas neodymium supply chain.Finally,based on the impact of “de-sinicization” of overseas rare earth supply on China,this paper puts forward suggestions for China’s future rare earth strategy adjustment and policy optimization.Through the above research,this paper mainly draws the following five conclusions.The “de-sinicization” process of the rare earth supply outside China can be divided into four periods: before the rare earth crisis(before 2010),during the rare earth crisis(2010-2015),during the Sino-US economic and trade friction(2017-2019),and during the global new crown pneumonia epidemic(2020-present).Before the rare earth crisis,there was no obvious“de-sinicization” of rare earth supply outside China.In the latter three periods,the “de-sinicization” of rare earth supply outside China has evolved from a single link to the entire industrial chain,from Japan,the United States and the Europe as the main participations to multiple countries around the world.The “de-sinicization” policies and measures have gradually diversified,and the efforts have been continuously strengthened.The resilience of the rare earth supply chain outside China can be assessed from the three dimensions of agility,robustness,and dependence.The evaluation results show that the “de-sinicization” of overseas rare earth supply has improved the agility of most resilience mechanisms outside China,but lowered down the market share of Nd Fe B permanent magnet;the robustness of the overseas Nd Fe B permanent magnet supply chain has not been substantially improved,and China and its exports are still the key factors affecting the robustness of overseas rare earth networks.However,China’s influence in the rare earth enterprise network under construction has declined,and the overseas dependence on the import of China’s middle and upstream rare earth products has decreased.The resilience of the overseas rare earth supply chain has shown a certain potential.The supply chain resilience of Nd Fe B permanent magnet outside China is mainly affected by the stable supply of China externally,restricted by political,legal,social and other factors internally,and depends on factors such as production factors,market supply and demand,industrial scale,supply chain collaboration and other conditions.Among all the factors,market prices,technological progress and breakthroughs,China’s influence,support from foreign governments,demand growth due to energy transition,and supply chain collaboration are key influencing factors.In addition,it is found that the demand increase due to energy transition has a significant positive impact on the import dependence of all products,and rare earth ore reserves have a significant positive effect on the import dependence of rare earth compounds,the impact of import prices,supply chain collaboration,and the number of rare earth factories and companies varies across different products,showing that end-use demand and resource endowment are still the core factors affecting the resilience of rare earth supply chain.The resilience of the overseas neodymium supply chain mainly depends on the changes in supply and demand in China and abroad.First,under the low demand scenario,the supply shortage of neodymium will not exist or only exist in the last year of the forecast period;under other demand scenarios,the supply shortage of neodymium will begin to appear during 2022 to 2025.Secondly,stimulated by the supply shortage,overseas will mainly alleviate supply risks by increasing the recovery rate of neodymium,which will be the highest in the low mining and high demand scenario.Finally,the net import dependence of separated smelting products outside China will continue to decline,and the net import dependence of Nd Fe B permanent magnet will change according to the supply and demand scenarios in China and abroad,which will remain above 50% in the three scenarios of low demand.In the context of the irreversible trend of “de-sinicization” of overseas rare earth supply,China’s future strategic adjustment and policy optimization of rare earth should be on the premise of ensuring industrial security and resource security,and oriented to achieve the Pareto optimality of trade interests,public interests and related corporate interests.First,in response to the fact that China cannot monopolize the global supply of rare earth for a long time,China should moderately avoid “politicization” of rare earth issue,seize the dominance of the global supply chain that cannot be shaken in the short term,and focus on the market-oriented operation and modernized transformation and upgrading of the rare earth industry.Second,in the context of the diversification of overseas rare earth resources and China’s import dependence of rare earth mines,China should encourage enterprises to deeply embed the new global supply pattern of rare earth resources,and dynamically adjust the total amount control indicators,so as to ensure the security of domestic resource supply and global supply chain status at the same time.Third,China should conform to the world consensus of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality,promote the green growth of China’s rare earth,and enhance the international image of China’s rare earth supply chain.In addition,China should continue to improve the independent innovation level of rare earth and downstream industries,promote the modernization,transformation and upgrading of the rare earth supply chain as soon as possible,and enhance the competitive advantage of China’s entire rare earth supply chain.Lastly,in view of the agility of the overseas Nd Fe B permanent magnet supply chain has been partially improved,the degree of dependence has declined,and the overseas rare earth enterprise network under construction has shown certain development potential,China should carefully simulate the possible scenarios for the decoupling of overseas rare earth supply chains from China,and make a countermeasure plan as soon as possible.