Either the Chinese are the intelligent strategic thinkers I believe them to be or the dunces you believe them be. That's a good starting point.
Next, for you to suggest that Chinese REE miners and refiners did not benefit from the higher prices back then is ridiculous. On the other hand, it's not important! The purpose of the price spike was three-fold: (1) get ROW prospectors to identify and develop new deposits by drilling tens of thousands of holes, (2) scare ROW off REE to advantage Chinese industry and (3) preserve domestic resources. Brilliant plan; mission accomplished.
Need confirmation? Call your buddy at BMW or give me his number.
Whatever you think the Chinese lost, they gained far more in the long run. Not to mention, ROW is further behind and just plain lost at this point. Otherwise China wouldn't be picking Mt Weld and Mt Pass clean at prices they control. Others, too.
You actually agree with most of this; kinda have to. You are only stumbling over it because I put it together while you were stuck pushing your outdated narrative to protect your ego. I'm not prone to that as a scientist; I made a career of just going with the flow of data.
But again, it's down to: So what? What's it mean to Lynas? That's where my narrative can provide vision and yours does not. You think the Chinese are bumbling idiots that are still paying for their mistakes and I think they're brilliant strategists likely to continue on the same planned path which implies limited upside to REE pricing. My view further suggests that they will continue developing, consolidating and upgrading their "overcapacity", esp in vertically-integrated SOEs, to capture increasing downstream market share. Overcapacity is good for them and would be expected under my vision of their strategy.
Objective readers who compare my post and your counter have a clear choice. Yours is contorted, incongruous, ad hoc; mine is elegant or, as you put it, "neatly packaged".
The more interesting aspect of this to me is that neither your nor my position makes a clear and compelling case for investing in Lynas obvious. Why are you invested? With Lynas selling 50/50 into China/ROW, perhaps they're well positioned either way? As long as they get Condisoil approval, of course.
LYC Price at posting:
$2.05 Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)