I'm posting this here because of the graph: the Philippines is the only country which exports all its nickel as ore, not as ingots. The nickel mines are usually small, unsafe, of doubtful legal status and almost invariably Chinese owned Nickel ore is a controversial cargo as it is very prone to slurry liquefaction on voyage unless rigorous precautions are taken - which, in Chinese owned small mines in the Philippines, relying on corruption of local officials for their operating permits, they never are. The cargo liquifies, the ship capsizes in about two minutes and the entire crew are killed. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/indonesian-mineral-ban-george-nordahl
Chinese-owned mines exporting to China on, presumably, Chinese-owned shipping; surely this is a problem for China to sort out, no? China could refuse to import nickel ore meaning that the Chinese mines would have to smelt the ore into ingots which are safe to transport. Or is this too simplistic?
The Chinese don't think that way. If they did, it wouldn't be a problem. As it is even Indonesia insists on adding value by doing the smelting before shipping the nickel.
You would think that they would be very bothered, particularly as they seem to claim most of the sea belongs to them already. I wonder with the power in the world moving to Asia and their indifferent attitude to all things pollution-related, whether the Chinese are also the inheritors of The Gallic Shrug.
In Tagalog:" Bahala na" - God knows! In Putonghua " Mei Guanxi" - Doesn't matter! China doesn't give a liang fen damn about pollution of countries that are not populated by "the black headed people". Filipinos have black hair but they are The Boat People Who Eat Dog and they don't count. What matters is cheap imports.
The Chinese in the south are pretty big on the dog-eating front. Strange that the Vietnamese somehow missed out on that soubriquet. Perhaps they are known as Our Vicious Neighbours Who Occasionally Kick Our Arses In Conflicts.
The Philippines could follow Indonesia's lead and ban the export of ore but that's likely to place a further strain on Sino-Philippine relations and could harm Philippine interests more than Chinese ones.
China was not much upset by Indonesia's ban on ore exports in favour of ingots. I doubt if at a State level China would be troubled by such a move. What is lacking is the will to organise and sort out the issue in the Philippines.
Legal mining in the R.P is not an easy proposition.. A foreign mining company can invest millions of $`s and wait a year or 2 for a tree clearing permit... A single Barangay captain can stop a multi million venture going forward. The amounts of red tape required by the DENR is absolutely colossal. Back in 2006 shipping nickle ore to China was a highly profitable business from mines such as Berong in Palawan as the resource prices were high.. 10.00 USD/lb. The idea is to ship nickel ore and raise funds over a 5 year period in order to develop and raise market funding for smelting facilities. No longer a viable business IMO especially at only 4.00 USD/lb....Actually...Forget it!
