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China’s bid to strangle the world’s supply of heavy rare-earth elements was about to hit a wall. Vietnamese entrepreneur Luu Anh Tuan had lined up U.S. backing for a technology that could break Beijing’s chokehold on the critical minerals behind everything from smartphones to missile-guidance systems.
Tuan and his family had fled Vietnam for the U.S. to escape Beijing’s tightening grip over Hanoi, where the Chinese Communist Party exerts a heavy influence on domestic governance.
In July 2023, he signed a technology transfer agreement, seen by Fox News Digital, to bring the heavy rare earth separation technology he was using at his Vietnam-based company, Vietnam Rare Earth (VTRE) to VTRU Corporation, a company registered in Nevada. VTRE had also signed a series of memoranda of understanding (MOU) agreements with Western companies.
“He had a bad sense of insecurity about being in Vietnam. He was determined to transfer his technology to the US as quickly as possible,” a source familiar with the rare earth industry, granted anonymity to speak without fear of retribution, told Fox News Digital.
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Luu Anh Tuan, chairman of mining company VTRE in his Hanoi office with samples of rare earth oxides in Hanoi, Vietnam, Sept. 7, 2023. (Reuters )
At the time, the world was entirely dependent on Chinese companies to separate their heavy rare earth metals.
“China has been really working for the better part of over 20 years now on building this dominance,” Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview.
And while companies like U.S.-based MP Materials and Australia-based Lynas are in the process of developing their own separation technologies, China still controls up to 90% of the rare earths separation and refining capacity and over…
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