Chinese companies are the largest shareholders in two Australian mines producing minerals vital for Beijing’s hypersonic missiles and nuclear programs, helping it overcome “severe challenges” to accessing key resources.
In a rare admission of its vulnerability, China says it depends on imports for its supply of zirconium, a little-known critical mineral. Australia is the world’s largest producer and supplies China with 41 per cent of its imports.
Not only did Australian regulators allow Beijing-backed companies to become major shareholders in the two Western Australia mines, the federal government even gave one of them a $160 million soft loan to help it into production.
Australia is supplying these raw materials vital for China’s military build-up, while at the same time signing up to be a partner of choice for the United States as it seeks to break Beijing’s stranglehold over the processing of rare earths and critical minerals.
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If they don’t buy from us they will buy from someone else. The main thing is to get our fair share and using it to build a better future for our kids. Which never happens and it doesn’t matter if the mines are owned by Chinese or as is more often the case US/UK. We should own all our countries resources and these companies should be extracting them under contract to the owners, not stealing the legacy for our future generations and evading payment of tax.
Or by Australians. Gina isn’t sharing.
The problem isn’t which nationality the shareholders are in, it’s that the mines are run as a business for shareholder profit, shareholders who have enough capital to throw their weight around parliament and avoid having to use Australia’s resources to benefit Australia.