alt Hacker News> The Wikipedia Tungsten article states the largest reserves are in China followed by Canada, Russia, Vietnam and Bolivia. This contradicts the articles claim.
No, it does not, it's just a confusion of the term reserves. That's not on you, though, because everyone constantly gets it wrong.
Reserves are not estimates of the amount of a mineral underground. To be counted as proven reserve, you need to show that the mineral is economically extractable at market prices. Specifically, by starting to extract them. They are "working inventory" of mines that have been developed, they are not our understanding of how the minerals are distributed. They are also a function of commodity prices, not something that remains constant unless you dig them.
China has so much of the worldwide production and reserves because mining is an extremely capital-intensive industry, that is also sensitive to labor costs and environmental legislation. For a long time, China had the trifecta of lax legislation, cheap labor, and sufficient political stability to attract investment. US or Europe can't compete because mining there is more expensive, the third world can't compete because people are wary of investing billions into projects that might go to zero for political stability reasons.
Should the market prices of key minerals rise to the point where it makes sense to mine them outside of China, reserves will be developed and production will shift. This will probably require political will to either tariff Chinese production or subsidize production outside China, because so far China has wielded mineral exports as a weapon only for brief periods, being careful to release exports to crater prices often enough to kill competing projects.
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The US has lots of tungsten and other minerals. The problem is mining them here--people really don't want to see huge holes in the ground, industrial run off, and ecological collapse.
If the fundamentals of international resource extraction changes (which because of the increase in wages and living standards and expectations in China is happening) then we might see wide spread and rapid mining happening in the US. My questions in that scenario are 1) who will work these mines? The US is running at very high employment right now, and mining is very hard work 2) where would our ore refinement equipment and skills come from? China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. They have infrastructure to BUILD the infrastructure for ore extraction and refinement. My understanding is that they're uninterested in selling that currently 3) then all the other local issues like where will they be able to sell locals on building giant mines, dealing with the heavy traffic, potential environmental concerns, etc.
> To be counted as proven reserve, you need to show that the mineral is economically extractable at market prices. Specifically, by starting to extract them.
You don't need to be actually mining the stuff for it to be considered a reserve, at least in the Canadian (CIM) definitions. You do need at least a pre-feasibility study, and details on market prices & contracts.
The general point is right though, "mineral resources" means there's metal in the ground, "mineral reserves" means there's metal in the ground that can be economically mined, with consideration of the mining methods, infrastructure, legal title, environmental impact, metallurgy, market contracts, etc.