dr looi on fb malaysia, page-51

China basically derailed its 30yr RE ambitions with the last exercise in clumsy manipulation that came to a head 2011, not only smashing ROW demand from 58ktpa to 16ktpa peak to trough but completely destabilising demand across the suite of REE, demise of Ce to polishing powder & virtual obliteration phosphors almost instantly, then the more gradual elimination of HRE to NdFeB. While broader ROW demand has recovered volumes as I've demonstrated, China is still dealing with suite destabilisation as above, and I really don't think they want EU, US & Jap Govt's pouring another round of $100M's into RE substitution. Particularly when the now hold 85% mkt main game NdFeB.

A number of billionaires were created by the last price spike, read where one was supposedly still holding 600t DyO when the artificial prices finally collapsed August 15. These are the traders/speculators behind the "illegals", the black, cash trade in RE the Govt has found so difficult to control/eliminate, largely due to local compliance via brown paper bags.

While some LT observers claim there will be no change to the corruption there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, much higher volumes of visible trade on exchanges and a higher price floor as much greater volumes pass thru the tax net. Resulting firstly from consolidation into 6 SOE but secondly by a very clever move whereby the State delegated to local officials the task of both allocating local production quotas, and monitoring them, in return they not only collect the new resource tax by value but get to keep it! Effectively the State is now bribing the facilitators to control/eradicate the black economy in RE.

So where now do these wealthy Chinese RE manipulators/speculators turn to make a quid?

BTW, did not reach that conclusion on my Pat Malone.