China Does Not Want To Be Hit By Missiles Produced With Its Parts
China’s long term planning has allowed it to acquire some serious advantages which it now uses to counter economic and other attacks on it.
The refining of rare earth metals and the production of magnets from them is only one of several advantages it gained. These metals are not really rare. They are usually byproducts of large extractions of other minerals. But their refinement was considered to be environmentally dirty. It is only profitable at a large scale. Over the last two decades China has managed to create a near monopoly in it.
Rare earth magnets, while small in size, end up in a myriad of products. They are cheap but essential and difficult to replace.
As soon as the Trump administration tried to put high tariffs on China the country hit back. The export of rare earth products were stopped until a licensing process had been put into place.
The products are now considered to be dual-use items. China will allow the export of them for civilian purposes but it denies their use for the production of weapons. It wants to prevent to be hit by U.S. missiles which have ‘Made in China’ labeled parts in them. It is difficult to blame it for that.
Today’s Wall Street Journal has nice write up on the issue:
China Is Choking Supply of Critical Minerals to Western Defense Companies – WSJ via MSN
Earlier this year, as U.S.-China trade tensions soared, Beijing tightened the controls it places on the export of rare earths. While Beijing allowed them to start flowing after the Trump administration agreed in June to a series of trade concessions, China has maintained a lock on critical minerals for defense purposes. China supplies around 90% of the world’s rare earths and
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