From my perspective, the natural evolution and expansion of global free-market capitalism into mainland China was disrupted by the reforms of Deng Xiaoping about 25 years ago. By fiat he created a centrally commanded version of capitalism in which it appeared that domestic Chinese costs (of both skilled and unskilled labor) were lower than those in the then-developed world. We now know that this was only a perception (an artifact), due to virtual and actual subsidies paid by the Chinese local, provincial, and national governments, to 'kick-start' and then maintain what turned out to be a massive export-driven Chinese national economy.
The 'reforms' of Deng were labeled Capitalism with Chinese characteristics and they worked. However, the logical, foreseeable consequences of the subsidy program (invisible to foreigners but known to insiders), namely the economic cancers of over-capacity and over-supply, also began. Its consequences are now sharply curtailing the rate of growth of the Chinese economy, and the impact of these consequences is also to hold back the global 'recovery' from the debt-fueled Western economic collapse of 2007.
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I recently updated the TMR Advanced Rare-Earth Projects Index, to reflect a name change. The effective date of the update is May 20, 2013 May 16, 2013. The specifics:
- On March 7, 2013, Galileo Resources PLC (AIM:GLR) announced an update to the SAMREC-compliant mineral-resource estimate for the Glenover project in South Africa. According to the executive summary of the associated preliminary economic assessment, 7.4 Mt of the resource is at the Indicated level @ 2.20% TREO and 3.0 Mt is at the Inferred level @ 1.96% TREO (cut-off grade not specified).
- On May 16, 2013, Crossland Uranium Mines Limited (ASX:CUX), co-developer of the Charley Creek project in Australia, announced a name change to Crossland Strategic Metals Limited, while maintaining the same ticker symbol.
The Index currently consists of 51 rare-earth mineral resources, associated with 46 advanced rare-earth projects and 44 different companies, located in 32 different regions within 15 different countries.
I have also updated the pricing used in the Index data, to reflect the average monthly prices for April 2013.
You can access the updated details via the Index page.
Last updated on May 20, 2013 to reflect additional update on Glenover project.
Disclosure: at the time of writing, Gareth Hatch holds no shares or stock options in any of the companies mentioned in this article, or in any publicly traded rare-earth company, nor is he doing paid consulting for any such company.
