Chapter 20 7. Fifth of Top 10 Surveys: Resources in China

The so-called resource-rich country is not only about the amount of resources it has, but also about how to use these resources. Whether it is to win a war or seek stable development of the country in peacetime, it is necessary to properly mobilize the resources of the whole society. It is precisely because of this that we must be extremely cautious on this issue and strengthen the country's international competitiveness from the perspective of resources. Topic Introduction: Redefinition of Wealth - Strategic Economics of Resources - Resources in China Over the past 10 years, one word we've talked about a lot is wealth.

When our spiritual and material life becomes more and more abundant, when our media and newspapers repeatedly mention this topic, we seem to have entered an era of wealth. However, have we ever thought about such a question: what exactly is wealth? To answer this question, we must go back in history, allowing us to glimpse the ultimate definition of wealth. For human beings, the most accurate form of wealth refers to items that can meet people's material and spiritual needs. In this sense, items that can meet your various production and living needs materially are wealth; It is also wealth that we feel happy and comfortable.

In the earliest economic activities of human beings, all economic activities were for the sake of survival, so the transactions that occurred were nothing more than two fish for a clay pot, two sheep for a dog, and the exchange behavior brought about It is the convenience of human life, and there is no other situation. However, all this changed when money came into being. The emergence of currency itself is to provide a trading medium for transactions, so that people who want to exchange dogs do not need to lead two sheep with them, and those who want to exchange fish do not need to hold a clay pot at all times. In this way, currency as a means of wealth Symbols appear in our lives.

As a symbol of wealth, it needs to have a certain value. Therefore, no matter how valuable the items used as currency are today, they must be rare and valuable items at that time. This is why precious metals such as gold and silver , the reason why it has always played the role of currency in the long river of human history. In modern society, out of convenience, we choose a solution linked to gold or silver, and use paper currency to perform circulation functions. Such a solution is all right. However, what will happen when this solution is abolished? What about the situation? In terms of the nature of currency, as Marx said, gold and silver are inherently currency, but currency is only a symbol representing wealth and a method of measuring social wealth. Therefore, when paper currency is separated from gold, silver and all physical objects After that, there is no difference between this currency and a piece of plain white paper.

In last year's financial crisis, Zimbabwe in Africa was undoubtedly the country that suffered the most. Its inflation rate has reached a staggering 100,500%. There, the price of a chicken is 13 million Zimbabwe dollars, a single small currency , its paper value is actually lower than the value of paper. In order to alleviate this pressure, its government even issued a single banknote with a denomination of 100 billion Zimbabwe. An obvious fact is that when a country's inflation rate reaches such an astonishing level, its economic situation becomes precarious and may collapse at any time, just like the patterns carved out of stones on banknotes.

We know that currency is the measure of social wealth, so when physical wealth continues to become precious and scarce, it means the gradual decline of currency reputation. This is an irreversible trend. With the gradual reduction of resources, physical wealth will become more and more expensive, which means that paper currency will inevitably depreciate gradually. Even the currency that seems to be quite strong at present, as long as our earth If the total amount of resources on the Internet continues to decrease, then its depreciation trend is doomed. In this sense, Zimbabwe's today also heralds our future to a certain extent. In the face of economic laws, no country can stand alone.

When we feel this alarming reality, the first thing we must do is to re-examine the definition of wealth. In the final analysis, in the history of human civilization, barter has occupied the longest history, which means that Therefore, only those resources that can meet our living needs are the most valuable wealth. As we said in Chapter 2, physical wealth represented by resources is the eternal wealth in human society, and the more scarce it is, the more worthy of our collection. History tells us that the value of resource wealth is absolutely incomparable with artificially stipulated currencies.

For a country's monetary system, the value of resource wealth is extremely precious. Since currency is a measure of social wealth, it also shows which country has more precious natural resources such as non-ferrous metals, coal, forests, and oil. , which country's resource-linked currency has greater credit protection. In addition, resources are also important raw materials for national construction. No matter what kind of construction we engage in or develop any project, we need to directly rely on resources in the end.More importantly, when we have mastered increasingly scarce resources, it means that we have wealth that can continue to appreciate in our hands. This wealth does not distinguish between countries, nations, time, and space. As long as we are willing, It can be exchanged for any form of currency at any time.

In fact, the significance of resources to a country is far more than this, especially when the country is in confrontation with other countries, this meaning becomes more profound. From a macro point of view, the confrontation between countries is by no means limited to the simple military means in the tribal era, but the confrontation of economic strength at a deeper level. If in this confrontation, one party's economic strength is weak, then It is difficult to maintain this long-term consumption. The longer the confrontation period, the less hope of victory. In the eyes of ordinary people, in a war, the factor that determines the outcome of a war is the military literacy of the army, but in fact, what really plays a role is often the comparison of the war resources that the two warring parties can use.

In fact, our history has already proved this point. In its unique development process, the country has fully demonstrated this resource-based competition method. In our Warring States period, when Qin Shihuang decided to destroy Chu, he specifically asked his generals how many troops he needed to use. The young Li Xin answered 200,000, while another veteran Wang Jian gave 600,000. s answer. In Wang Jian's view, Chu State, as a big country in the south, has a territory of five thousand miles, and its population density and resource breadth are extremely astonishing. The food reserves of Chu State alone are enough to support ten years of war needs.A resource-rich country like this has great potential, enough to concentrate a steady stream of war resources to fight a protracted and large-scale war.

Because of this, Wang Jian insisted that if Qin State wanted to defeat Chu State, it had to concentrate all its war resources and form an overwhelming advantage in a short period of time before it could hope to win the final victory. Out of blind self-confidence, Qin Shihuang did not adopt this strategy. However, the facts proved that Wang Jian's judgment was correct. When Qin's 200,000 troops entered Chu, Chu relied on a steady stream of supplies as backup, and adopted the strategy of strengthening the walls and clearing the country. Sticking to tactics made it impossible for the Qin army to fight quickly, and when there was a problem with the supply line of the Qin army, its failure became inevitable. Because of this, we can say: the competition among countries is fundamentally the competition of resources. Through history, we can see that in the old industrial age a few centuries ago, the most precious resource was manpower. It was for this reason that there were millions of black slaves traded, and hundreds of thousands of Chinese laborers came out. The tragic scene of going to the Americas, but it is through this method of plundering resources that the modern sense of socialized mass production in European and American countries has been established. When mankind entered the industrial age, the definition of resources expanded. In modern warfare, the war cycle became longer and longer, and the direct consequence was the increase in the consumption of war resources. At that time, astronomical strategic resources were consumed every day, and had expanded from the initial human and food levels to include oil, coal, science, technological products, intelligence and other aspects. Take the Six-Day War in the Middle East in 1967 as an example. Israel wiped out its war reserves for several years in one day. If there is no strong support from the United States at any cost, or the war continues for a while, then the political situation in the Middle East today The situation is bound to change fundamentally. That is to say, the more resources a country can deploy, the stronger its international competitiveness. When such a concept is widely accepted by countries around the world, it means that a great competition for resources has begun. China has never been a resource-poor country, and we have a deep understanding of this. However, in the past 10 years, our resources are being plundered unprecedentedly. We can assert without exaggeration here that China is gradually breaking away from the status of a resource-rich country and heading towards a dangerous abyss. This is by no means an alarmist talk. In fact, in the past ten years, the consumption of resources in China has reached an outrageous rate. There are very few resources to invest in construction and production. In a word, the vast majority of China's resources are exported to international buyers who hold a lot of powerful currencies. For example, in terms of rare earth resources alone, we are experiencing a catastrophic catastrophe. The value of rare earths to modern industry is no less than food equivalent to people's livelihood, especially in high-tech industries such as information, electronics, aerospace, etc., they are absolutely indispensable and important strategic materials, and our possession of this resource, It has reached 72% of the world's total, so that we once proudly chanted loud slogans such as "the Middle East has oil, and China has rare earths". However, in the past ten years, instead of controlling such an important resource, we have experienced the exact opposite. From 1990 to 2005, in this short period of 15 years, the export volume of our rare earth resources has increased by nearly 10 times. It was reduced to 64% of the original price. Such a situation makes us sad, but it is far worse than that. Among the three major gold mines we have discovered recently, the proportion of foreign holdings has exceeded 80%. In addition, in the past 10 years, our coal mines and iron mines have all suffered the same fate.According to experts' statistics, my country's largest rare earth mine, Baiyun Obo, is likely to shrink by half in the next 10 years and disappear completely in the next 30 years, and our tungsten ore resources can only withstand 20 years of consumption. It is intolerable that when international buyers frantically gather resources in China at almost crushing prices, our domestic merchants are pressing each other down. When international investors develop low-level processing industries based on resources, our Domestic mines, factories, and so on are scrambling to snatch this opportunity of "disguised cheap sale". It's a painful reality, especially when we realize the urgency of the problem. When countries around the world are substituting physical reserves for currency reserves, we are choosing to exchange resources for unreliable symbols of wealth. The foreseeable fact is that in the near future, when our resources are in short supply, how expensive we will pay The price to redeem the wealth that should belong to us. In this sense, the so-called resource-rich country is not only about the amount of resources, but also about how to use these resources. Whether it is to win a war or to seek stable development of the country in peacetime, It is necessary to properly mobilize the resources of the whole society for allocation. Because of this, we must be extremely cautious on this issue and strengthen the country's international competitiveness from the perspective of resources. At present, we are in the final stage of the financial crisis. Affected by this, the global mineral resource prices have also begun to decline, and some foreign resource companies have also begun to shrink sharply. It can be said that this is the best opportunity for Chinese companies. Taking advantage of the slump in mineral prices caused by the decline in global demand and actively stockpiling the most valuable assets is enough to ensure that we will not worry about resources in the future.