«——【·Foreword·】——»
The effect of China's rare earth cards was immediate, Europe began to "dream", and Americans felt that the EU was crazy.
«——【·Rare Earth Supply Cutout·】——»
In April, the rare earth export control list released by China was like an accurate scalpel, cutting off the lifeline of the EU's high-tech industry. The 17 rare earth elements and products listed in detail on the list happen to be the core raw materials for the manufacturing of European new energy vehicle motors, wind power equipment magnets and chips. Data shows that 92% of the EU's rare earth permanent magnets rely on China's imports, which is far more dependent on Russian energy.
EU policymakers once thought the energy dilemma was tricky enough. After the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Europe lost Russia's cheap oil and gas supply and had to purchase US energy at high prices, and industrial electricity costs soared by 40%. But energy can still be replaced, and the supply of rare earths directly hits the heart of the industrial system.
Poland once tried to build its own rare earth processing plant, but the production cost was three times higher than China's, and the plan was forced to run aground. Just six months after China tightened exports, the inventory of permanent magnet motors of major European automakers was in a hurry, and the BMW Group's factory in Munich was even forced to cut electric vehicle production capacity.
This crisis stems from a trade backlash. In order to prevent China's new energy vehicles from seizing the European market, the EU imposed a tariff of up to 45.3% on imported Chinese electric vehicles. China immediately countered and reduced its rare earth export quota by 80%.
The EU did not expect this move to hurt its own foundation. China accounts for 90% of the world's rare earth separation capacity, and this technical barrier makes it impossible for Europe to find alternative sources in the short term. When Brussels officials saw that China's new energy vehicle market share in Europe was still growing against the trend, they realized that their dependence on rare earths had already penetrated into the bones.
«——【·Interstellar adventure in despair·】——»
The European Commission's space mining report broke the silence of the industrial dilemma. The report proposes to use the moon as the first step in space resource development, and plans to mine helium-3 and rare earth elements in lunar soil. As soon as this science fiction document was released, it caused an uproar in the international community.
The American media bluntly questioned Brussels' rationality, believing that the EU, which cannot escape the resource dilemma on Earth, is simply a fantasy to go to the moon to mine.
The EU is not a momentary impulse. As early as 2017, Luxembourg took the lead in legislation recognizing private companies' ownership of space resources, paving the way for space mining. The German Aerospace Center has secretly carried out lunar soil simulation experiments to test the technical feasibility of extracting rare earths from lunar soil.
EU officials revealed at an internal meeting that the rare earth reserves on the moon's surface may far exceed those on the earth, especially the elements rich in Kripp minerals such as thorium and uranium are the raw materials urgently needed by the European nuclear industry.
This plan carries the strategic ambitions of the EU.
They hope to completely get rid of their dependence on Earth's resources by mastering space mining technology. European Space Agency Director Alfonso Sestro, emphasized at the hearing that lunar mining is not a science fiction story, but an inevitable choice for the survival of European industrial industries.
According to the plan, the EU will launch lunar probes by 2030 to draw resource distribution maps; and establish a small lunar base before 2040 to realize primary resource mining. This timeline is a full ten years ahead of the original deep space exploration plan.
«——【·The unavoidable triple knot·】——»
Technical reality has poured cold water on the EU's ambitions. At present, the deep space exploration technology mastered by humans is still in the stage of returning the moon sampling. To achieve large-scale mining, a series of technical difficulties such as fully automatic mining equipment, earth-to-month transportation systems, and resource purification devices are needed. European Space Agency engineers acknowledge that even the most optimistic estimates, having the ability to mine the moon will require at least 20 years of technical accumulation.
Economic accounts make plans unsustainable. The cost of mining rare earths on Earth is about $50,000 per ton, while the cost of transportation on the lunar mining alone is as high as $1 million per ton.
The German Federal Federation of Industry estimates that even if the technology is mature, the price of space rare earths will be more than 20 times that of Earth's products. This cost difference means that unless there is a disruptive technological breakthrough, EU industry simply cannot afford the price of space resources.
Legal disputes are equally tricky. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty clearly stipulates that the moon does not belong to any country. However, the United States has tried to establish a rule system for privatization of lunar resources through the "Artemis Agreement" and allows member states to delineate "safe zones" to exclusive resources.
If the EU joins the agreement, it will face confrontation with countries such as Russia and China that insist on non-commercializing space; if it does not join, it may lose the opportunity for technical cooperation. This legal dilemma puts the EU's lunar plan in a dilemma.
Differences within Europe have exacerbated the difficulty of implementation. Germany and France actively promote plans, hoping to revive the aerospace industry; southern European countries such as Greece and Portugal believe that the ground energy crisis should be resolved first. This divergence has led to the EU allocating a token 1.2 billion euros for the lunar mining program in its 2025 space budget vote, far below the required start-up capital.
«——【·New battlefield of resource game·】——»
This lunar mining farce is essentially a microcosm of the reconstruction of the global resource structure. The EU is trying to get rid of its dependence on China's rare earths through technological leap, but it is trapped in a more complex geopolitical game. The United States, on the surface, questioned the EU plan, but in fact, it wooed European countries through the "Artemis Agreement" and tried to dominate the formulation of space resource rules. Russia clearly opposes the privatization of lunar resources and is joining China to promote the establishment of a multilateral space governance framework.
China's response seemed calm. While consolidating the advantages of rare earth separation technology, Chinese companies have accelerated their layout of new energy industry chains in Europe. BYD's battery factory in Hungary is put into production, directly evading tariff barriers; CATL cooperates with BMW Group to build a European local battery production line, and exchanges technical cooperation for market space. This pragmatic strategy greatly reduces the effectiveness of EU trade protection measures.
The EU's moon plan exposed strategic anxiety. When China's new energy vehicle market share in Europe grew by 167% against the trend, and when European factories stopped production due to rare earth shortages, Brussels had to pin their hopes on the distant moon. But space mining cannot solve the immediate crisis. The International Energy Agency predicts that global rare earth demand will triple in the next five years, and Europe will find it difficult to establish alternative supply chains by 2030.
«——【·Conclusion·】——»
This interstellar adventure may change human perception of resources, but it cannot save the current EU. When the distribution pattern of earth's resource has been set, trying to find a way out by conquering space is more like a helpless move in the decline of industrial hegemony.
When Brussels officials looked up at the moon, they might have forgotten that the real resource crisis has never been a matter of reserves, but a matter of willingness to cooperate and share. In the critical period of the transformation of new energy, this lunar mining gamble will eventually become a special footnote in the history of global resource game.
