China Announces Quartz Discovery Vital to Chips to Rival US Mine

(Bloomberg) -- China announced it has discovered new deposits of high-purity quartz, a mineral with a small but crucial role in the production of semiconductors and solar panels.

High-purity quartz is one of the few critical minerals dominated by the US, with the bulk of global production located around just one town in North Carolina. The Chinese discoveries, made several years ago, were announced Thursday by the Ministry of Natural Resources.

The timing of the announcement highlights Beijing’s desire to minimize leverage points the US may have in the fast-escalating trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. State-backed Xinhua News Service hailed the discovery for its potential to secure supply lines for Chinese high-tech industry.

The deposits were discovered in Henan in central China in December 2020, and in Xinjiang in the west in October 2021, the ministry said. No information was given on their size, nor the time and money that might be needed to develop them into productive mines.

High-purity quartz is important to both the solar and semiconductor industries, because it’s used to make the inner layer in crucibles that produce ultra-refined polysilicon wafers. Two mines near the town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, account for more than 80% of the world’s supply of commercial high-purity quartz, BloombergNEF said in a report last year.

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