왜 중국에서 희토류 밀수가 계속되는가

Abstract

This paper analyzes the reason why the Chinese central government has not been able to eradicate the smuggling problem that is prevalent in its rare earth industry and hinders its attempts to protect its scarce resources, which is of great strategic importance and economic value. Since 2006 when the Chinese government officially recognized the gravity of the smuggling problem, export restriction policies and consolidation measures have been implemented to root out smuggling; however, illegal practices seem to have been little affected. This paper focuses not on the Chinese rare earth policies per se but on the incentives of two key actors: the local governments and the local small-scale producers of rare earth elements (REEs). The local governments of the rare earth abundant inland regions with few other resource advantages have an incentive to maximize tax revenues by protecting small-scale REEs producers in their jurisdictions. Given the connivance or acquiescence of the local governments and the domestic and international price gap, small-scale producers with overcapacity continue illegal mining and smuggling. This finding suggests that, despite the Chinese central government’s recent attempts to restructure the REEs industry based on central state-owned conglomerates, it would be difficult for it to eradicate rare earth smuggling within the near future, possibly hindering China’s resource strategy to utilize rare earths as a strategic leverage.