Good article Jack-
Wish I had known you were in Shanghai, I live a a few hours south in Ningbo.
Chinese Rare Earth stocks such as Baotou have been exploding. The story on the massive gap between supply and demand is well known. What story I think that has not been told is how changing Chinese market dynamics here alone is bound to cause a spike in rare earth pricing. As the Chinese economy exploded intense compeition was the only rule. It was company against company, province against province, this led to China being the lowest cost producer and not acting like a monoploy supplier despite dominating global production. They could not control all of these companies. Now however, they are downsizing from 90 rare earth companies into 20 companies and setting up a pricing mechanism under 2 companies. This change alone, despite the supply/demand gap is bound to create increased prices.

Don't know if this is true but it would certainly make things interesting in the ree pricing