Summary: rare earth minerals are probably going to be increasingly important in the future, and governments are getting involved in managing the supply. Currently most of the production takes place in China.
I wouldn't recommended reading the article, because it's a jumble of facts and numbers with no thesis and no insight. It's got the vague "yellow peril" undertone that's common these days, but doesn't offer any real evidence that rare earth elements will be the next oil.
I disagree strongly. "Probably" going to be important? The article makes it very clear that rare earth minerals are absolutely essential to the clean technologies that will drive the post oil future. While the United States has ignored creating a strategy on developing future technologies and its major corporations have colluded to kill green tech, the forward thinking Chinese government has aggressively positioned themselves to being central to any development of electric cars and any other tech that is strongly reliant on batteries.
That may well be true, but the article isn't very convincing from any angle. There's no technical or economic analysis of other ways to make magnets (say, emerging technologies vs. more expensive, low-tech technologies). No in-depth data from geological studies about the quantity of rare-earth deposits in other countries, and how easily they could be exploited. No evidence that the Chinese government is actually making an active effort to corner the market on rare-earth elements (low labour costs have made it a leader in many low-value areas, too).
And, nobody is totally certain that battery-driven cars are necessarily the way forward. A decade ago, when fuel cells where the hot story, maybe this article would have been talking about China cornering the market on platinum for catalysts.
Japanese industrial policy seeks pretty much three things: competitiveness of the Japanese export industry, assured supply for the Japanese domestic markets, and preventing China from screwing us. They have a curious frenemy thing going on: increasing economic cooperation with the aim of effectively establishing economic mutually assured destruction if either restarts the more traditional Japan/China relationship. (Japanese industry essentially can't survive without Chinese raw materials at present -- rare earth being only one example of hundreds. Similarly, Japanese investment is fueling much of China's economic boom.)
Sidenote: Notice the California NIMBYism versus global warming angle? I suppose our coming global apocalypse is worth any effort to stop... as long as it doesn't require radiation in California.
About the NIMBYism: that was just one more part of the article that sounded like a press release from the US rare earth producers.
Basically, they want protectionist policies to avoid foreign competition and they want exemptions from environmental legislation. So just the same as every other business in existence.
Every business has its pet bogeyman to scare legislators (or to give legislators plausible cover for their actions). I'm sure China will play this role well for various groups.
The only reason 97% of them are mined in China is why everything else is produced in China -- it's cheaper. There is a shuttered mine in the U.S. that is being restarted that has and will produce all of these elements. The mine closed because they were undercut by China. If China won't sell at any price, presumably they will be profitable again. IMO, the U.S. should embargo Chinese rare earths since they have been shown to be a politically unreliable supplier.
I wouldn't recommended reading the article, because it's a jumble of facts and numbers with no thesis and no insight. It's got the vague "yellow peril" undertone that's common these days, but doesn't offer any real evidence that rare earth elements will be the next oil.