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China holds a global monopoly of up to 97 percent for rare earth elements (REEs), which are indispensable for all kinds of twenty-first century high-tech applications. Since China has disrupted its exports and started discriminating between domestic and foreign demand, REEs have become a geostrategic resource. In March 2012, Japan, the USA and the European Union jointly filed a World Trade Organization dispute settlement case against China. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate why China implemented export quotas and tariffs on REEs and how the state is engaged in this sector domestically and abroad.

The analysis frames China as a “competition state” and connects domestic with foreign economic policy on REEs. It uses data from Chinese official documents and non-Chinese sources.

Better government control aims to consolidate the sector and lay the foundation for three other goals, namely: the establishment of integrated and innovative Chinese corporations that compete globally; the provision of incentives to attract high-tech foreign direct investment to China; and better environmental protection. China wants to climb the next step of the technological ladder to gain global economic leadership.

Global environmental protection in mining is eased. However, non-Chinese market players can only take advantage of new business opportunities when the prices remain high. Since REEs are of strategic importance, rising political interference and raw materials diplomacy will continue to distort markets and price building.

The paper connects domestic reregulation of China's rare earth sector with foreign policy goals (or “going in” and “going out”) using the competition state approach.

Rare earths are essential materials for many high-tech industries critical to both economic development and national defense. China, the world's dominant supplier of rare earths, has recently been imposing stricter controls over its production and export. The purpose of this paper is to examine the domestic roots of the changes in China's rare earth industry production and exports in its three-decade rise to the current global monopoly.

This paper adopts the historical institutionalism approach to analyze the trajectory of industry and trade development. The author analyzes data collected from government whitepapers and reputed scholarly and news sources.

This paper argues that the Chinese rare earth industry has gone through three periods of development, in which the state attempted to control the market and industry through reformulating rules and institutions to achieve state goals. Domestic state institutions, combined with macroeconomic environment and state governance strategy shaped the three-decade experience of rare earth industry and trade development in China.

This paper builds on existing findings about Chinese state regulations to provide a novel analytical framework to analyze the role of the state in industry and trade development in the rare earth industry. The focus on a single strategic industry seldom studied in the current literature also provides ample empirical value to further scholarly understanding about this industry.

By adding a Ce salt and an Nd salt to an anodizing electrolyte, modified anodic films are obtained on aluminum surfaces. This paper aims to study the effects of rare‐earth elements on the corrosion resistance of the anode film.

The crystalline film was studied by X‐ray diffraction. The methods of scanning electron microscope, energy dispersive X‐ray analysis, electrochemical polarization, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) were used to characterize the properties of the films.

After rare‐earth element modification, the pores of the porous layer were very evidently smaller, the anodic film was more compact, and the thickness and hardness of the films had increased. The corrosion resistance of the anodic films modified with rare‐earth elements clearly was improved in neutral, acidic, and basic NaCl solutions. Ce showed a better effect than Nd in increasing the corrosion resistance of the films, and the film modified with Ce+Nd showed the highest corrosion resistance. EIS analysis showed that the impedances of both the barrier layer and porous layer of the anodic films increased after modification with the rare‐earth elements, indicating that the anodizing process was affected by the presence of the rare‐earth elements.

The results presented in this paper offer a foundation for further research and application of rare‐earth elements in aluminum anodic oxide films.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, for the first time, the relationship between the prices of rare earth materials and economic growth. Renewable technologies and many high-demanded technologies need significant supplies of such materials.

The paper uses a panel of the six most significant rare earth producers around the globe, as well as certain panel methodologies.

The empirical analysis indicates the presence of a positive impact of such minerals prices on economic growth. Causality methodologies also indicate unidirectional causality between GDP and the prices of rare earth materials, with the causality running from these prices to economic growth. The findings survive a number of robustness checks.

The claim that natural resources are a curse that makes the countries worse off is not supported for the case of rare earth materials. The results are expected to be of high importance, because these particular rare earth materials are extensively used in a huge list of technological products with high demand and low costs, while they are hard to be replaced.

This paper aims to introduce a novel approach to the fabrication of photoluminescent materials by coating rare earth aluminate luminescent materials on metallic substrates and a readily manufacturable light source with robust structure in the form of photoluminescent sphere (APS).

The clean and dried stainless steel sphere was sprayed with UH 2593, a white undercoat, the luminescent coating and the weather resistance coating in chronological order.

After adhered onto the stainless steel sphere, the peaks corresponding to the N-H stretching vibrations were changed. The intensity of free N-H stretching at 3,536 cm⁻¹ dramatically decreased and the peak of hydrogen-bonded N-H stretching of PU moved to lower wavenumbers. The red shift of the infrared bands of functional groups was attributed to the strengthened hydrogen bonding. The hydrogen bonding interactions between the stainless steel substrates and the polyurethane coating endowed the APS with excellent adhesive property and also promoted the evenly distribution of the photoluminescent particles in the polymer coating matrix.

This approach can be applicable in the fabrication of the photoluminescent materials. The APS can be used as signs and guiding post in remote areas without sufficient electricity supply and in the seas and rivers with complicated hydrological conditions.

This approach has provided a method to produce tough and durable luminescent signs for remote areas and dangerous seas and explained the functional mechanism of the combined application of metallic materials and non-metallic materials.