`China rare earth embargo on Japan`

Used to introduce the 2010–2012 cut in export quotas as a euphemism for political warfare against Japan, in setting up the scale comparison between rare-earth and steel markets.

I did see something in a materials journal that they talked about — I mentioned rare earths, and they said the demand's going to reach $4.5 billion by 2019. It gave a breakdown of where world rare earth demand goes. In 2010, 2012, China basically decided to cut their export quotas. That meant they refused to sell to Japan. That's a euphemism for political warfare against Japan. 125,000 metric tons in 2014 in lots of different areas. Permanent magnets being the largest, a little over a quarter. Polishing of glass and ceramics — it turns out a lot of the rare earth oxides are very hard and make good polishing media. They're not really rare. We call them rare earths but they're not really rare in the Earth's crust. Metal processing turns out 12%. People use cerium in steel to tie up the sulfur, and there's a billion tons of steel, so it doesn't take very much cerium in steel to end up being a fairly large fraction of the total. Catalysts, phosphors, battery alloys.