The destination of the 30,000 sheep donated by Mongolia is clear www.tellerreport.com

Since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia, Mongolia has donated 30,000 sheep to China. On the 17th, Chinese Ambassador to Mongolia Chai Wenrui stated that these sheep will be slaughtered in a centralized manner after entering China, and then the destination of this batch of mutton will be decided according to the intentions of China and Mongolia. It is understood that Mongolia will dedicate these mutton to the people of Hubei and Wuhan who have shown bravery in the fight against the epidemic.

China is the biggest winner of the US renewables boom www.rt.com

As the shift to clean and renewable energy begins to gain serious momentum, the US is now facing another conundrum: Being too dependent on China for the minerals used to build clean energy systems.
Since the days of President Jimmy Carter and the 1970s oil crisis, the US has relentlessly pursued the utopia of becoming energy independent. But with persistent oil crises and severe oil price shocks, it has become glaringly obvious that Washington will never achieve true energy independence by relying solely on fossil fuels, even if the United States finally becomes a net oil exporter. The majority of America’s citizens also feel that the government should ‘‘...focus on developing alternative sources of energy over expansion of fossil fuel sources’’ in a bid to alleviate climate change.

Whether it’s in the pursuit of energy independence or in a bid to ameliorate climate change, there’s an undeniable shift to renewables going on in the US, with renewable energy accounting for 11.4 percent of total US energy consumption in 2019 compared to only four percent two decades ago.

But as the shift to clean and renewable energy begins to gain serious momentum, the United States is now facing another conundrum: Being too dependent on China for the minerals used to build clean energy systems.

China supplies ~80 percent of the rare earths elements (REE) used by the United States to manufacture windmills, solar panels, electric car batteries, cellphones, computers, medical equipment, national defense systems, and even in oil and gas technologies.

Back in 2018, the Interior Department released a list of 35 minerals it classified as being ‘critical’ to the US economy. The alarming part: The US entirely relies on imports from China for 14 of these minerals, and imports 75 percent of at least another ten.

Those figures are not exaggerations: According to the US Geological Survey, China supplied 80 percent of the US’ REE in 2019. Yet another worrying statistic: Although the US mined 18,000 metric tons of its own rare earths in 2018 and 26,000 metric tonnes in 2019, the US Geological Survey has revealed that all domestic production of mineral concentrates was exported. Only three decades ago, the US was the world’s number-one producer of these minerals but has slipped down to seventh place.

China’s vice-like grip on the US REE supply chain would become as clear as daylight if Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden ascends into the Oval Office and starts to implement his $5 trillion climate plan.

Biden has pitched a highly ambitious $5 trillion-plus climate proposal that he says would be necessary if the US is to match the EU by becoming a net-zero carbon emission country by 2050. Biden has proposed a staggering $1.7 trillion in federal spending over the next decade to achieve this goal, with the private sector expected to chip in with the balance. Biden says the taxpayer costs can be recovered by repealing the generous tax bonanza that Trump granted US corporations and also by eliminating subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.

Becoming Self-Sufficient
With China being home to nearly half of the world’s known REE deposits, the US will have little choice than to ramp up its imports of these minerals from the Middle Kingdom as it transitions to renewables, something not made easy by the fact that the entire globe is in the same race to shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy. Further, the specter of China using its strategic control of REE’s in a trade war remains very real.

Several energy experts have acknowledged this reality, and have emphasized that the US will only achieve true energy independence by inventing affordable clean energy technologies and ensuring that they are made locally and sold globally.

As US Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has declared: "We need to reverse our damaging dependence on China and other nations and rebuild domestic supply chains for everything from personal protective equipment to clean energy technologies.”

But this is not just about lowering our dependence on China out of an abundance of caution. Dr. Arun Majumdar of Sanford University and co-Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy has pointed out that we import more than 50 percent of our oil at a cost of about $300 billion a year--money that could be used to create jobs if we became self-sufficient in our energy needs.

Battushig to work at Evaluation Committee for 2030 Asian Games www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) announced the composition of the OCA Evaluation Committee on August 12, and First Deputy President of the Mongolian National Olympic Committee, Member of International Olympic Committee B.Battushig have been selected as one of the 10 members of the Evaluation Committee.

Petro Matad continues to wait for permitting progress in Mongolia www.oglinks.news

Petro Matad Limited (LON:MATD) shares fell around 10% in Monday’s early deals as its interim results statement included updates on the permitting process in Mongolia.

Hollywood film featuring Mongolian actors to screen in Mongolia www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, starred by Mongolian actress and model Gana Bayarsaikhan and other famous Hollywood actors will be screening in Mongolia from August 21.

Mongolia: Coronavirus update as of 17 August 2020 www.eeas.europa.eu

Total number of confirmed cases: 298; Recovered: 276; Deaths: 0; (Information current as of 17 August 2020)

Mongolia's GDP down 9.7 pct in H1 www.xinhuanet.com

Mongolia's gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by 9.7 percent year on year in the first half of 2020, the country's National Statistics Office (NSO) said Monday.

TIKA launches 40 projects in Mongolia for 6 months www.akipress.com

The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) have launched at least 40 projects over six months in Mongolia as ties between the two countries grow stronger, Daily Sabah reported.

Construction of oil refinery plant in Dornogobi to be accelerated www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. At the direction given by the Prime Minister, Deputy PM Ya.Sodbaatar and some cabinet members held a hearing on the construction progress of an oil refining plant under construction in Altanshiree soum, Dornogobi aimag as well as pressing issues, followed by a meeting with corresponding officials on August 13.

After TikTok and WeChat, Alibaba could be the next target in Trump's tech war www.cnn.com

Hong Kong (CNN Business)The United States has taken aim at some of China's biggest tech champions, from Huawei and ByteDance's TikTok to Tencent's WeChat. Alibaba, one of the world's largest retail and internet conglomerates, could be next.

The actions against Chinese companies have marked a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration's push back against Beijing's rising tech prowess, forcing global players to chose between China and the United States.
"We are in a paradigm shift, and geopolitics is going through a historic transformation right now," said Alex Capri, research fellow at the Hinrich Foundation and senior fellow and lecturer at the National University of Singapore. Washington officials are making "more accusations" against Chinese tech companies, an "indication that the administration is really looking to decouple" the tech industry, he added.

Unlike ByteDance or Huawei — whose global expansion was blunted after Washington cut it off from US technology — Alibaba (BABA) hasn't had much success expanding into Western markets. But the fact that it is a national tech champion in China may be reason enough for Washington to target it, according to Capri.
Alibaba hasn't yet been threatened with the same kinds of sanctions that US President Donald Trump has proposed or levied against other Chinese tech firms. And Trump has even spoken fondly of company founder Jack Ma, calling him a "friend of mine" earlier this year after the Chinese billionaire said he would donate supplies for fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
But the company is on the minds of US officials. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo name-checked Alibaba last week when he urged American companies to remove "untrusted" Chinese-owned technology from their digital networks.
Washington wants to protect "Americans' most sensitive personal information and our businesses' most valuable intellectual property — including Covid vaccine research — from being accessed on cloud-based systems run by companies" such as Alibaba and Tencent (TCEHY), among others, Pompeo said at the time.
Multinational companies are "being picked as national champions for strategic assets and are being leveraged ... whether they like it or not," Capri said.
Companies like Alibaba were "nurtured in a fully protected environment in China, that was closed to foreign competitors [and] they captured market share without having to compete with foreign companies," Capri said. "Now that they're venturing out and they want to compete in open markets, they're facing a backlash."

A wide net
Alibaba, which did not respond to requests for comment for this story, operates widely popular e-commerce platforms, mostly available in China and other Southeast Asian markets. It also started Alipay, one of the most dominant payment apps in China alongside Tencent's WeChat Pay.
Any action by Washington would likely not affect the company's e-commerce and retail business in China, which accounts for nearly 80% of Alibaba's 509.7 billion yuan ($73.5 billion) in annual revenue. International retail and wholesale revenue accounts for 7% of the company's total haul. And even sanctions on Alibaba's US cloud business would be minimal. Cloud services, which Alibaba does not break out by region, accounts for less than 10% of total revenue.
But the broadly worded executive order issued against WeChat last week indicates that Washington may be preparing to cast a wider net.
The WeChat order, for example, could prevent all US persons and US companies from working with anything related to the messaging app, according to Dan Wang, a Beijing-based technology analyst with research firm Gavekal Dragonomics. He said that could cut WeChat off from all US technologies — a move that would bar Tencent from the software and semiconductors it needs to keep WeChat operating.
"If they do something like that with Alibaba, that would also be a pretty big blow," he said. Alibaba has very large cloud operations in China and "requires US semiconductors and software in order to continue these operations," he said.

And even though Alibaba generates little revenue from the United States, the country is still an important market. Last year, the company opened up its e-commerce business to small US businesses and launched an English language version of its Tmall platform for the first time, seeking to double the number of foreign brands on Tmall to 40,000 in three years. A lot of big US companies already sell goods on Tmall, including Apple (AAPL), Nike (NKE) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ).
Alibaba's other ties to the United States also run deep. When the company chose to go public in 2014, it picked the New York Stock Exchange — an offering that raised a staggering $25 billion, setting a global record that was only bested last year when Saudi Aramco's IPO raised $25.6 billion.
How US firms could feel the pain
US firms could also suffer from the fresh restrictions imposed on Chinese tech companies.
If, for example, Washington forces Apple (AAPL) to remove "untrusted" apps from ByteDance, Alibaba and especially Tencent from its App Store in China, the iPhone would become a lot less attractive to Chinese buyers.
WeChat is deemed a daily necessity for hundreds of millions of Chinese who use it to hail rides, pay for goods, message friends and family, post photos, order food and more.
"If Apple takes off WeChat from its App Store, then that's something else," said Chingxiao Shao, founder of Red Gate Asset Management, an independent investment manager focused on China's equity markets.
If that happens, "the damage on Apple is going to be much stronger than the damage on Tencent," she said.
Last year, Apple sold $44 billion worth of goods and services in greater China, an area that includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, accounting for about 17% of the company's total sales.