A rare earth ingot, photographed in China in 2013. Credit: Sim Chi Yin via Magnum
On an early September morning 10 years ago, the Chinese fishing trawler Minjinyun 5179 collided with a Japanese Coast Guard patrol boat in the East China Sea. The trawler had been fishing near disputed territory controlled by Japan known as the Senkaku islands, or Diaoyu in Chinese. Beijing had been increasingly hawkish towards numerous contested territories, but a long-standing animosity between the two countries made the Senkakus a particularly fiery flashpoint.
The Japanese Coast Guard detained the crew of Minjinyun, incensing Beijing and setting off a series of intense anti-Japan demonstrations across China. The diplomatic fallout outlasted the fishermen’s release when, in what many saw as a retaliation, Beijing blocked all exports to Japan of one of the most critical materials of the modern world: rare earths.
Rare earths are the pixie dust of modern technologies. With tongue-twister names like dysprosium, yttrium, and praseodymium, they comprise 17 elements on
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