The National Strategic Materials Administration is a political department that Yang Xing never appeared in his previous life, thanks to his continuous advice to the central government to pay attention to the reserves and management of national strategic materials. Obviously, Cheng Canghai and the successor Wen Rengui both listened to his words a lot. Cheng Canghai was very concerned about strengthening the management of domestic resources during his tenure, and specifically instructed Vice Premier Wen Rengui to be responsible for this matter.

Last year, the State Council merged the Rare Earth Office, Reserve Center and other units, and established the National Strategic Resources Administration at the beginning of this year. Although it seems to be of low level, it has a veto power to manage domestic strategic resource exploitation and exports.

The integration of the domestic rare earth industry this time was led and coordinated by the National Strategic Resources Administration. According to various situations discovered during the integration process of the Southern Rare Earth Group, the National Strategic Resources Administration, together with the Ministry of Commerce, the General Administration of Customs, the State Administration of Industry and Commerce and other departments, conducted a survey and inspection on the mining of rare earths and other precious resources nationwide. It also issued a special document on the rampant behavior of cherishing resources such as theft of rare earths in China, and reported the Jiangxi rare earth case nationwide to warn other warnings, so that other provinces and cities with rare earths and other rare resources should be vigilant and attach importance to the protection of national strategic resources, which will be directly linked to their political achievements!

The domestic officialdom can be not afraid of threats and intimidation, nor is it afraid of the Discipline Inspection Commission coming to the door, but it is not a sloppy matter that threatens the official position. This is the iron rule of the officialdom. If you lose the black yarn for the sake of the mines, it is really unpaid. Once the official protection umbrella is lacking, no matter what kind of local thief is, it will not be able to defeat the central government.

After investigating and dealing with this rare earth case, the National Strategic Resources Administration sounded the alarm for foreign forces to intervene in the national strategic resource industry, and in addition, it has received many similar reports before. Following the clues, not only used rare earth stolen mining as the target, but also shifted from domestic rare earth mining to foreign buyers. The first one was Mitsui Products Co., Ltd.

Mitsui Products has a very big background and is the core enterprise of the largest chaebol in Japan. The Mitsui family is the leader of the four major monopoly chaebols in Japan and is one of the few super chaebols that have developed since the Meiji Restoration and have a history of 400 years without decline. In the battle between the new Meiji regime in Japan and the Tokugawa Shogunate, the Mitsui family bet on the new emperor's chaebols to fund large sums of military salaries in the reformist army. After the Meiji regime won, it was repaid. Mitsui Bank was in charge of the cashier and exchange of the "official bank", and obtained the monopoly privilege of issuing "Mitsui" currency issuance, which greatly benefited. This is equivalent to the position of the central bank today. Mitsui has embarked on the path of chaebols with financial capital as the core.

In 1876, the Mitsui family established the first private bank in Japan with the help of official silver as the basis, Mitsui Bank, the first private bank in Japan's modern significance. Then they opened the Mitsui Products Company. They entered the industry and relied on their relationship with the political economy to purchase a number of industrial and mining enterprises at a low price from the political economy. These industrial and mining enterprises played an important role in the expansion of military preparations and military supply in Japan's militarism, and the strength of the enterprises themselves also expanded dramatically.

Before World War II and for a long time during the war, the Mitsui chaebols had always been at the forefront of the four major chaebols in Japan and was an important driving force in the process of Japanese economic industrialization. Even after the war, Mitsui's enterprises were liquidated by the occupied troops and briefly subsided, they quickly took the express train of post-war reconstruction in Japan and once again rose to become a major chaebol that was heavyweight in Japan.

The Mitsui Consortium currently consists of 25 large enterprises, including Sakura Bank, Mitsui Products, New Prince Papermaking, Toshiba, Toyota Motor, Mitsuo, Toray, etc. The consortium has a leading advantage in chemical, heavy machinery, integrated motors, automobile manufacturing, real estate, nuclear power generation, semiconductors, medical and office electronic equipment industries. In contrast, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Yasuda, the other three major chaebols in Japan, are just equivalent to the Mitsui chaebol, so there is a saying that Mitsui President is equivalent to the Japanese underground "Prime Minister".

Among them, Mitsui Products is a representative of Japanese comprehensive trading companies. Its business purpose is to provide transaction services, that is, as an intermediary, develop overseas markets for exporters and find the raw materials or products needed for importers. In order to implement these transactions, Mitsui Products provides customers with the most effective business trends, market conditions and other information. It supervises the commercial credit of both parties, helps raise funds or arranges barter trade. It even provides customers with global transportation services, extending its tentacles as much as possible to the corners that people want or even imagined in global economic life.

To put it bluntly, this slogan that sounds like a tongue twister is two, opening up sales for Japanese companies' exports and locking the source of raw materials for Japanese companies to import. For this purpose, Mitsui Products has made a global layout, and has done all means to plunder the resources needed by Japanese companies from many countries, becoming one of the few resource oligopolies in the world that can monopolize a certain commodity.

When the National Strategic Resources Administration investigated the acquisition of domestic special glass by chance, Mitsui Products discovered that Mitsui Products not only uses glass to collect rare earths, but also is also interested in another metal indium used on it. Indium is a rare metal. In fact, its global reserves are not low. Statistics show that it is equivalent to silver. However, due to the dispersed reserves and difficulty in mining, a single natural indium ore with indium as the main component has not been found so far. Most of the time, it appears as a companion ore, so the global indium output is less than one percent of silver. Currently, the world's proven reserves of indium are more than 16,000 tons, while China accounts for 13,000 tons, making it the world's largest supplier of native indium.

Although the output of indium is small, it has an extremely important position in the fields of LCD displays, solar cells, optoelectronic products and military aerospace. The most widely used is ito film, which is mainly used to produce LCD display glass, curtain wall glass and windshields for aircraft and cars. There is currently no other metal that can replace indium. It can be said that indium has irreplaceable role in high-tech industries, especially in the IT industry.

my country's indium reserves are mainly concentrated in Guangxi and Yunnan provinces, but indium resources are extremely dispersed in the local area. The indium output of more than 95 local enterprises is only 1 to 5 tons. In addition, the application technology of indium in high-tech products is basically in the hands of foreign companies. Domestic companies could only extract indium ingots and indium wire from ores, but could not further process them.

After a large amount of precious indium resources were sold to Japan at a low price, Japan in turn sold the refined indium products back to Chinese companies at a high price. my country's export of refined indium per ton is only about 3 million yuan, while Japan's imports of thin film liquid crystal materials processed by indium per ton is as high as 30 million yuan per ton!

As the largest purchaser of raw material indium, China sold indium over 70 to Japan. In order to maintain the low price of Chinese indium for a long time, Japanese companies led by Mitsui adopted very despicable commercial means. They often went to the concentrated areas of indium factories to inquire about the production capacity of each indium factory, and then purchased it at the demand of each small indium factory. Since the production capacity was not met, the small indium factory was unwilling to give up the hard currency settlement of international trade. The small indium factory, which is in a competitive relationship, dared to live in a group or take orders rashly. In this way, the indium raw materials produced are in a state of no sales and can only be forced to lower the price.

Japanese companies that have successfully "divided and conquered" have turned large-scale purchase orders for indium into small-scale dispersed purchases through domestic middlemen, and each time they purchased several hundred kilograms. In addition, the rampant smuggling has led to domestic companies rushing to lower prices. Not only is the loss of indium resources in vain, the pricing power also falls into the hands of companies like Mitsui.

Fortunately, this situation was not partially improved until Xingwei Resources began to intervene the year before yesterday. In recent years, Xingwei Resources has acquired small-scale indium factories in Guangxi and Yunnan. Using local investment as bait, it requires local governments to cooperate in cracking down on indium ore smuggling and stop intervening in indium raw material exports, which has changed the situation of low-price competition among indium plants.

When the National Strategic Resources Administration investigated the indium mine, Xingwei Resources had integrated more than half of the domestic indium production capacity and actively reported to the management department the intentions of Japanese companies such as Mitsui Products for indium mines. It was recommended that indium be managed licenses and quotas, tariffs be imposed and strict restrictions on the output, recovery rate and environmental protection of indium manufacturers, and fundamentally drive small indium factories with low output and low technical content out of this industry.

At this press conference on the management of rare strategic resources such as rare earths, indium, and molybdenum, as the main representative, the National Strategic Resources Administration made a name for criticizing foreign companies, headed by Japan's Mitsui Products, using bribes, stealing my country's commercial secrets, and encouraging a few illegal businessmen to smuggle precious national resources, resulting in a large loss of strategic resources in my country. It was proposed that this situation must be reversed. When China joined the WTO, it was argued for this and obtained preferential regulations that differentiate minerals belonging to strategic resources in China. Now China must use weapons such as international law to identify and manage foreign resource enterprises.

Of course, the representatives of the National Strategic Resources Administration did not say anything, giving Mitsui Products a glimmer of hope. The representatives of the Administration said that because of the weak domestic technical foundation and insufficient research and development of application technologies such as rare earths and indium, they cannot just hold good things in their hands and become moldy. Foreign companies can bring technology to China, use technology to invest and set up factories in production areas such as rare earths and indium, and turn these resources into high-value products for export. China's political services are very welcome to this "technology for resources" investment.

At the press conference, Xingwei Resources and many domestic resource giants also signed many mutual cooperation agreements. Obviously, under the guidance of the National Strategic Resources Administration, domestic rare strategic resources are being integrated in the name of various industrial alliances. The desire to seize the international pricing power of these resources is obvious, but the representatives of Mitsui Products and other companies who were criticized by name turned blue. This means that in the past they broke each one and encouraged Chinese resource companies to compete disorderly, and obtain low-priced resources by destroying the environment will no longer work. (..)
Chapter completed!