SHIZUOKA, Japan — A Japanese mining ship departed on Monday for a remote coral atoll to probe mud rich in rare earths, part of Tokyo’s drive to curb its reliance on China for critical minerals as Beijing tightens supply.

The month-long mission of the test vessel Chikyu near Minamitori Island some 1,900 kilometers (km) (1,200 miles) southeast of Tokyo, will mark the world’s first attempt to continuously lift rare earth seabed sludge from 6 km (4 miles) deep onto a ship.

Japan, like its Western allies, has been reducing its dependence on China for the minerals vital to the production of cars, smartphones and military equipment, an effort that has taken on urgency amid a major diplomatic dispute with Beijing.

“After seven years of steady preparation, we can finally begin the confirmation tests. It’s deeply moving,” Shoichi Ishii, the head of the government-backed project told Reuters, as the vessel departed the port city of Shizuoka on a bright sunny day, with a snow-capped Mount Fuji in the background.

“If this project succeeds, it will be of great significance in diversifying Japan’s rare earth resource procurement,” he said, adding that recovering the key minerals from 6 km below sea level would be a major technological achievement.

The vessel, with 130 crew and researchers, is scheduled to return to the port on Feb. 14.

REDUCING RELIANCE ON CHINA WON’T BE EASY
Last week, China banned exports of items destined for Japan’s military that have civilian and military uses, including some critical minerals. The Wall Street Journal reported Beijing has also begun restricting rare earth exports to Japan more broadly.

Japan has condemned China’s dual-use ban but declined to comment on the report of a broader ban, which China has not confirmed or denied. Chinese state media, though, have said Beijing was weighing the measure.

Finance ministers from the Group of Seven industrial powers will discuss rare earth supplies at a meeting in Washington on Monday, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Japan is no stranger to facing China’s wrath over rare earths. In 2010, China held back exports following an incident near disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Since then, Japan has reduced its reliance on China to 60% from 90% by investing in overseas projects like trading house Sojitz’s tie-up with Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths, and promoting rare earths recycling and manufacturing processes that rely less on the minerals.

The Minamitori Island project, however, is the first to attempt to source rare earths domestically.

“The fundamental solution is to be able to produce rare earths inside Japan,” said Takahide Kiuchi, executive economist at Nomura Research Institute.

“If this new round of export controls ends up covering a lot of rare earths, Japanese companies will again make efforts to move away from China, but I don’t think it will be easy,” he said.

For some heavy rare earths, such as those used for magnets in electric- and hybrid-vehicle motors, Japan is almost totally dependent on China, analysts say — a major risk for its key automotive industry.

LONG-TERM PROJECT
Since the 2010 scare, the Japanese government and private companies have built stockpiles of the minerals, though they do not disclose volumes.

At a New Year’s party for Japan’s mining industry on Wednesday, several executives said they were better prepared than before to cope with the potential disruption, citing Japan’s diversification efforts and stockpiles.

But Kazumi Nishikawa, principal director of economic security at the trade ministry, said the government had to continually remind companies to diversify their supply chains.

“Sometimes, you know, some event happened, then the business reacts, but the event finishes, the business forgets. We have to maintain continuous efforts,” Mr. Nishikawa said on the China Talk podcast this week.

The Minamitori Island project, into which the government has sunk 40 billion yen ($250 million) since 2018, is also a long-term play.

Its estimated reserves have not been disclosed, and no production target has been set. But if it succeeds, a full-scale mining trial will be conducted in February 2027.

Mining the mud was previously viewed as uneconomical due to high costs. But if supply disruption from China continues and buyers become willing to pay higher prices, the project could become viable in coming years, said Kotaro Shimizu, principal analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting.

China is keeping a close watch. When the ship was conducting surveys around the island in June last year, a fleet of Chinese naval ships sailed nearby, Mr. Ishii said.

“We feel a strong sense of crisis that such intimidating actions were taken,” he said. China said its actions were in line with international law and called on Japan to “refrain from hyping up threats.” — Reuters

HANOI — Vietnam’s Communist Party chief To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s where President Xi Jinping heads the party and state.

Next week some 1,600 delegates will gather in Hanoi to kick off a week-long Communist Party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state.

Mr. Lam, 68, bid for both top positions at a party meeting in December, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by the delegates and another three officials familiar with the matter told Reuters.

While the sources said the party meeting backed Mr. Lam to remain party chief, the three people briefed by delegates gave differing accounts on the question of the presidency, a largely ceremonial role but one currently held by the military.

Two said Mr. Lam won support for his bid, while the third said the conclusion was unclear. In any case, the final decision rests with delegates who will be elected at the congress.

The party’s secretariat did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The combination of the two top jobs for the next five years would mark a significant departure from Vietnam’s traditional power-sharing model. Only in exceptional periods after the death of incumbents have the positions been merged, including in 2024 when Mr. Lam held both positions for about three months.

POWER-SHARING TALKS
Should Mr. Lam succeed, the military, a powerful faction within the party, would give up the presidency in exchange for maintaining a broad autonomy over the promotion of its senior officers, two sources said.

One official said military leaders are negotiating “safeguards” to limit Mr. Lam’s authority. The defense ministry was not immediately available for comment.

In possible signs of early concessions, some controversial economic policies pursued under Mr. Lam’s first term were revised or faced unexpected hurdles ahead of the congress, including credit growth and a high-speed railway.

Supporters of combining the two roles argue all other communist countries — China, North Korea, Cuba and Laos — vest both positions in a single leader and note the move would bolster Mr. Lam’s economic reform agenda and strengthen his standing in meetings with foreign leaders.

Skeptics see the change as emboldening a leader seen as a risk-taker who has already vastly expanded the powers of the security apparatus.

The merger would be “the natural outcome of streamlining Vietnam’s political structure,” said Carl Thayer, a senior expert on Vietnam at the Australian Defense Force Academy, noting Mr. Lam has already effectively taken over some of the president’s powers with frequent overseas trips last year.

Starting Jan. 19, the week-long congress will elect 200 members of the new central committee, with a large number of newcomers expected to join, raising questions about whether they will confirm decisions made by the roughly 140 delegates who voted in December.

The central committee will elect the party chief and the politburo. Mr. Lam in July said the new politburo will have 17-19 members, but the size will depend on delegates’ votes on a pre-arranged shortlist.

The politburo will then nominate the president, prime minister and speaker of the parliament, whose appointments lawmakers must confirm. — Reuters

SYDNEY — Australia’s national parliament will cut short its summer break to pass laws tackling hate speech after the Bondi Beach mass shooting, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday, as concerns were also expressed over free speech.

The December 14 shooting in Sydney that killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism. Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by the Islamic State militant group.

The federal parliament will return next Monday, and Mr. Albanese said he wanted legislation to step up penalties for hate speech and authorize a gun buyback to pass the following day.

Australians were entitled to express different views about the Middle East, he told reporters in Canberra.

“What they are not entitled to do, is to hold someone to account for the actions of others because they are a young boy wearing a school uniform going to a Jewish school or a young woman wearing a hijab,” he said.

The proposed laws will also ease visa denials on the ground of racial bigotry, and lower the threshold for banning hate organizations including neo-Nazi groups, officials said.

ALBANESE FACED CRITICISM FROM JEWISH GROUPS, ISRAEL
In the days after the Bondi Beach attack, Jewish community groups and the Israeli government criticized Mr. Albanese for failing to act on a rise in antisemitic attacks and criticized protest marches against Israel’s war in Gaza held since 2023.

Last week, Mr. Albanese said a Royal Commission would consider the events of the shooting as well as antisemitism and social cohesion in Australia.

A top Australian arts festival has seen the withdrawal of dozens of writers in a backlash against its decision to bar an Australian Palestinian author.

The Adelaide Festival board said last Thursday it would disinvite Randa Abdel-Fattah from February’s Writers Week in the state of South Australia because “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue her program at this unprecedented time, so soon after Bondi”.

A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Ms. Abdel-Fattah responded criticizing the move as “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship”.

Around 100 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, local media reported.

The festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba, said the arts body was “navigating a complex and unprecedented moment” after the “significant community response” to the board decision. Three board members and the chairperson had resigned.

MOST POPULOUS STATE ADOPTS TOUGHER RULES
New South Wales state premier Chris Minns unveiled new rules on Monday that allow local councils to cut off power and water to illegally operating prayer halls and impose bigger fines, as part of measures to curb “hate preachers”.

Mr. Minns said the move was prompted by the difficulty in closing a Muslim prayer hall in Sydney linked to a cleric found by a court to have made statements intimidating Jewish Australians.

The mayor of the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield, which has a large Muslim community, said councils should not be responsible for determining hate speech.

“Freedom of speech is something that should always be allowed, as long as it is done in a peaceful way,” Mayor Frank Carbone told Reuters. — Reuters