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China bans exports to US of gallium, germanium, antimony in response to chip sanctions [Video]
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China bans exports to US of gallium, germanium, antimony in response to chip sanctions [Video]

China announced Tuesday it is banning exports to the United States of gallium, germanium, antimony and other key high-tech materials with potential military applications, as a general principle, lashing back at U.S. limits on semiconductor-related exports.The Chinese Commerce Ministry announced the move after Washington expanded its list of Chinese companies subject to export controls on computer chip-making equipment, software and high-bandwidth memory chips. Such chips are needed for advanced applications.The ratcheting up of trade restrictions comes as President-elect Donald Trump has been threatening to sharply raise tariffs on imports from China and other countries, potentially intensifying simmering tensions over trade and technology.China’s Foreign Ministry also issued a vehement reproof.China has lodged stern protests with the U.S. for its update of the semiconductor export control measures, sanctions against Chinese companies, and malicious suppression of Chinas technological progress,” Lin Jian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said in a routine briefing Tuesday.”I want to reiterate that China firmly opposes the U.S. overstretching the concept of national security, abuse of export control measures, and illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction against Chinese companies, Lin said.The minerals sourced in China are used in computer chips, cars and other productsChina said in July 2023 it would require exporters to apply for licenses to send to the U.S. the strategically important materials such as gallium and germanium. In August, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said it would restrict exports of antimony, which is used in a wide range of products from batteries to weapons, and impose tighter controls on exports of graphite.Such minerals are considered critical for national security. China is a major producer of antimony, which is used in flame retardants, batteries, night-vision goggles and nuclear weapon production, according to a 2021 U.S. International Trade Commission report.The limits announced by Beijing on Tuesday also include exports of super-hard materials, such as diamonds and other synthetic materials that are not compressible and extremely dense. They are used in many industrial areas such as cutting tools, disc brakes and protective coatings. The licensing requirements that China announced in August also covered smelting and separation technology and machinery and other items related to such super-hard materials.China is the biggest global source of gallium and germanium, which are produced in small amounts but are needed to make computer chips for mobile phones, cars and other products, as well as solar panels and military technology.China says it’s protecting itself from US trade restrictionsAfter the U.S. side announced it was adding 140 companies to a so-called entity list subject to strict export controls, Chinas Commerce Ministry protested and said it would act to protect Chinas rights and interests. Nearly all of the companies affected by Washington’s latest trade restrictions are based in China, though some are Chinese-owned businesses in Japan, South Korea and Singapore.Both governments say their respective export controls are needed for national security.China’s government has been frustrated by U.S. curbs on access to advanced processor chips and other technology on security grounds but had been cautious in retaliating, possibly to avoid disrupting Chinas fledgling developers of chips, artificial intelligence and other technology.Various Chinese industry associations issued statements protesting the U.S. move to limit access to advanced chip-making technology.The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said it opposed using national security as a grounds for export controls, abuse of export control measures, and the malicious blockade and suppression of China.Such behavior seriously violates the laws of the market economy and the principle of fair competition, undermines the international economic and trade order, disrupts the stability of the global industrial chain, and ultimately harms the interests of all countries, it said in a statement. The China Semiconductor Industry Association issued a similar statement, adding that such restrictions were disrupting supply chains and inflating costs for American companies.U.S. chip products are no longer safe and reliable. Chinas related industries will have to be cautious in purchasing U.S. chips, it said.The U.S. gets about half its supply of both gallium and germanium metals directly from China, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. China exported about 23 metric tons of gallium in 2022 and produces about 600 metric tons of germanium per year.The U.S. has deposits of such minerals but has not been mining them, though some projects underway are exploring ways to tap those resources.The export restrictions have had a mixed impact on prices for those critical minerals, with the price of antimony more than doubling this year to over $25,000 per ton. Prices for gallium, germanium and graphite also have mostly risen.

Just one degree: How a small rise in global temperature could reshape our world [Video]
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Just one degree: How a small rise in global temperature could reshape our world [Video]

A single degree might seem insignificant, but its the difference between stability and chaos.Since the 1970s, water in the Gulf of Mexico has increased by about one degree Celsius. While this may seem like a minor change, the consequences should not be underestimated. Each degree of change represents major repercussions.”We see in our models that the ocean temperatures are rising and hurricanes are likely to be more intense. With each degree Celsius of rising sea temperature, the wind intensity can rise by 20 miles per hour,” climate scientist Dr. Isla Simpson said. To better understand these impacts, climate scientists like Simpson create models of different scenarios. “We can run experiments with our models, where we look at a particular hurricane that might have occurred in reality, and then we can run a counterfactual case where you cool those sea surface temperatures and take them back to the temperatures that they might have been 40 years ago, and look at how does that change the behavior of this individual hurricane,” Simpson said. These models and these scientists have become important tools for institutions like the IMF and insurance agencies to help calculate the financial costs of each degree of warming. “There are quite a lot of climate scientists that have ended up going and working in the reinsurance industry because there’s a real need to for them to be predicting how are extreme events like hurricanes going to change,” Simpson said.In this model created by Hearst Television data journalist Nicki Camberg, you can see the rise in temperature on land and at sea. More Than Just windAn increase in wind speed isnt the only factor that comes along with increasing temperatures. We end up with more moisture in the atmosphere because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. With each degree Celsius of warming, the air can hold 7% more water vapor. This means record rainfall, resulting in floods, mudslides, and erosion. It also increases the airs ability to dry out the land.”A thirstier atmosphere is going to lead to more evaporation if there’s water available. So you end up with more evaporation from rivers and reservoirs. You end up with more evaporation from the soil and from the vegetation,” Simpson said.As the hotter air parches the landscape, wildfires become increasingly likely and devastating.According to Simpson, melting ice and snow in the polar regions also reduce the planets ability to reflect solar radiation, causing Earth to absorb more heat. Our understanding of greenhouse gases and what they do in the atmosphere can be traced back to scientist Eunece Foote in 1856, who predicted the warming effect of CO2. Her experiment featured glass canisters of various gasses left to heat up in the sun. She observed the canister with CO2 heated quickest and stayed hot the longest. Within the century, her predictions were proven correct. Scientists all over the world have collected decades of data showing an upward trend in the temperature at the same time as an uptick in atmospheric CO2 levels.To better understand the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, see the interactive model below. Local Impacts Recently, the conversation has shifted to the local economics of changing temperatures. Casco Bay, off Portland, Maine, was the heart of the lobstering industry in the 1970s. Now, Casco Bay has warmed by 1.5 Celsius since 1993, driving the lobsters toward Canada. “Their water temperature has hit the sweet spot where we were in the 70s and 80s, and we’ve climbed above that,” veteran lobsterman Steve Train said. In Casco Bay, lobsters have gone far off the coast to find their colder, deeper waters and the fishing industry is feeling the effect of this migration.”It increases the costs, bigger boats, more fuel, more crew, heavier rope and everything about it, increase the costs to maintain that,” Train said.”Change that may have taken thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years, we as humans are making changes in hundreds of years. So it’s taking a toll on Earth and the biosphere to adapt to those rapid changes,” Suzanne OConnell, Professor of Earth Sciences at Wesleyan University, said.Big Picture “You can look in deep time. You know, millions of years ago, you can look at events where the climate warmed, on average three, four or five, six degrees centigrade, and almost always really bad things happened, including mass extinctions,” Dana Royer, Professor of Geology at Wesleyan University, said.It’s a change that’s very real, and it’s getting bigger.”An image many people have in their heads is the Hiroshima bomb. We are adding an additional 1.6 million times that amount of energy every day to Earth. So how is Earth going to handle that?” OConnell asked.