Significance of Rare Mineral Resources to Strategic Emerging Industries

As non-renewable natural resources,rare minerals are extensively used as important raw materials in strategic emerging industries.As global consumption continues to increase over recent years,international competition in the area of rare mineral minerals has been escalating.On the basis of the identification of 22 rare mineral resources of six categories and analysis of their applications in strategic emerging industries,this paper has adopted a three-factor analytical framework and designed nine indicators from the three dimensions of supply risks,environmental impacts and economic impacts of restricted supply to conduct a quantitative evaluation of the strategic significance of rare mineral resources.The result indicates that the strategic significance of platinum-group metals is the highest and the strategic significance of cesium is the lowest.In order to further increase the reliability of evaluation results,this paper has employed the Monte Carlo simulation for uncertainty analysis.Simulation result demonstrates that after the impacts of individual indicators have been taken into account,the results of this paper’s evaluation of 22 rare mineral resources remain valid.Given the growing significance of rare mineral resources to strategic emerging industries,China should formulate a national strategy on rare mineral resources,strive to increase the supply security of key raw materials for strategic emerging industries and achieve the sustainable development and utilization of rare mineral resources for national security of natural resources.