The Chinese government has introduced a slew of new measures designed to tighten its grip on lucrative natural resources used in everything from electric cars to wind turbines. In a list released by the country's State Council on Saturday, Beijing declared that rare earth metals are the property of the state and warned "no organization or person may encroach on or destroy rare-earth resources." From Oct. 1, when the rules come into force, the government will operate a rare earth traceability database to ensure it can control the extraction, use and export of the metals. China currently produces around 60 percent of the world's rare earth metals, and is the origin of around 90 percent of refined rare earths on the market. Advertisement
Beijing has already prohibited exports of rare earth refining and magnet manufacturing technologies. In January, it banned the export of gallium and germanium, both highly sought after by the computer-chip industry. Fears that China is looking to exert control over the industry, and could disrupt critical technology, automotive and renewable energy supply chains, have sparked a race to shore up supplies from alternative suppliers. Both the U.S. and the EU have launched efforts to procure rare earths at home and abroad, including in Vietnam, Brazil and Australia. A year ago, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced construction of the first large-scale rare earth refinery outside of Asia, located in Estonia. She said the move would "bolster European resilience and security of supply."
A 2022 analysis from the European Parliament warned that over-reliance on monopolistic suppliers was a major risk for Europe. "The EU imports 93 percent of its magnesium from China, 98 percent of its borate from Turkey, and 85 percent of its niobium from Brazil. Russia produces 40 percent of the world's palladium," it said. "The latter is a reminder of the strategic implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the need for the EU to prepare for an increasingly uncertain world."
The EU has launched a probe into anti-competitive trading allegations against the Chinese electric vehicle market, which benefits from heavy government subsidies and preferential access to essential rare earth metals. Earlier this month, the two sides agreed they would host consultations in order to try and resolve the standoff.
That last paragraph really is so damning. It is admitting the superiority of China’s central planning and how it is being used to actually improve society. ”But at what cost?”
Well, apparently the cost is that shares of China’s largest rare earth mineral mining firm have gone up 5% since the announcement. China proving socialists right every single day and absolutely crushing the capitalist development speedrun challenge. It’s genuinely hilarious that the development plan of China runs basically like what I’ll describe below, and capitalist nations are just completely incapable of stopping it from happening because the power of capital is greater than the power of their states.
“hmmm yes, today I will invest in the Chinese rare earth mineral market. Since China controls 90% of global production and all of the infrastructure is in place, all I have to do is bring my money, tech, and expertise with me and I’ll carve myself some serious profit! Easy money!”
“Ahh yes thank you for the help developing our mining industry/technology Mr. Foreign Capital. We appreciate your business and you had a great run, but unfortunately for you we have nationalized your mineral resources. The extractive capitalism will now stop. Feel free to reinvest elsewhere or compete with us on the global market tho :)”
”China is nationalizing its rare earth minerals, but at what cost? We need to ban China from–“
”Wait omg is that another investment opportunity in China where I can bring in my capital/technology/expertise to make some money? Hell yeah, where do I sign?”
Rinse and repeat
You're saying China doesn't have to fight a battle it can't win but that it has to adopt a moral stance that is equivalent to it. It's a liberal moral mindset. China is incredibly strategic and cautious in its foreign policy because it knows just how bad the fascists can make things. China can't do anything about Palestine except as part of a broad coalition and China can't lead that coalition because as much as you think "words don't have power, but you still have to say them", building international voices against USA's military interests is high risk low reward.
China can't fix the world's problems, so why should we expect it to do anything about Palestine? Because it can or because it's the right thing to do? Let go of the moral positioning.
China is instead building literal material capabilities and infrastructure all over the world and this is far far above the bare minimum. The fact that China isn't "speaking out" while literally doing the most any country has ever done for building power in Africa and South America is something that isn't going to make a lot of enemies except of ultras and libs
I refuse this premise from the start. Why are you assuming that
1- The bare minimal political and economic sanctions against Israel leads them to "a battle they can't win". What is this Israel is a shithole with not even an army for themselves. How long would they survive without the nukes and America support?
2- The US doesn't need excuses to fight China, they're already doing that. Whatever China does towards Israel is not going to move the needle on US-China relations at all.
You should be aware this is literaly the exact argument people use to suppress leftist organizations. "Oh if we push for X policy then the fascists will start hunting us down and fighting us in the open" even though they're always doing that and capitalists don't need excuses to fight the left.
Nonsense. I'm not laying it on them to solve the crisis. I'm laying it on them to do the bare minimum from their side.
BTW I'll quote you from the article you clearly didn't read where Vijay Pashrad literaly counters this exact argument. Please I beg you, forget this whole comment chain and just go and read that, please I'd rather have that than pointless arguing. We are literaly talking about bare minimal gestures. Anything, literaly anything beyond just speeches at the UN. China has done nothing and if you think that is a compelling argument by communists towards the oppressed people global south then you're out of touch, sorry.
"Ah yes the literal soon to be global superpower, surpassing the US in every metric, obviously clearly can't lift a finger to defend global south interests." This is not a reasonable position.
Again read the Prashad quotes, he was asking for the bare minimum, not some amphibious assault war against Israel.
Pointless arguments are when commentators and pundits claim to understand the entirety of the geopolitical situation better than the countries who have been prosecuting that situation for centuries. You do realize that a no-fly zone literally means shooting down military aircraft, right? A no-fly zone is a escalatory move against a US proxy. That's not the bare minimum, that's literally violence in a conflict that China cannot win.
You're also speaking for the entirety of the global south when you say you think everyone sees China as both capable of doing anything about the conflict and also that if they don't then all of the other investment they make in the global south can be ignored as just meaningless. Forgive me if I don't think you speak for everyone.
As for China beating the USA on every metric, it's just not true. China is trending towards beating the USA on every metric and will overtake the USA on most metrics eventually. But the USA still has significant material advantages over China, some that China will never surpass. The most important ones to this conversation are:
Among others. No, China is not an impervious super power. It absolutely has a lot to lose right now that would throw it off the course it has been on to cultivate a socialist experiment that will last longer than the Russian one as we all try to figure out the right path towards communism. You seem to think you have it all figured out. You seem to imagine you can pass judgment on China when you have none of their military intelligence, none of their diplomatic relationships, none of their risks, and none of their strategic analysis.
But really, all you need to say was that you think a no-fly zone enforced by fucking Egypt at the behest of China is a bare minimum stance and we could have ended this conversation before it started, because clearly you don't live in the real world. I love Vijay, but he's not talking about undermining the Chinese communist project, he's inhabiting a very important role in leftist critique to push the dialogue in the right direction. You sound like an ultra, he sounds like a theorist and a pundit. There's a big difference.
You refuse to understand Prashad's point. BTW nice slander calling a fellow Marxist a "pundit". Good job punching left just because they disagree.
The bare minimum is literaly any anti-Israeli resolution at the UN.
If we both admit it wouldn't be enforced than what is the cost here? Literaly what is the cost of proposing this? The fear that this is some watershed moment that now justifies US starting WW3 against China? This is delusional and should be dismissed.
You realized China missed key moments like the student protests. Israel is a pariah state. The ICJ ruled against them. The nazi literaly got the same arrest warrant as Putin. You are ignoring these points to excuse Chinese inaction. Do you actualy believe the world would support any aggressive retaliatory move against China given Bibi is a literal war criminal according to the same liberal western institutions?
Stop making excuses by creating hilariously unrealistic results.
Almost every point listed here doesn't matter in relation with a war against China unless you think Guantanamo is relevant in WW3 against China.
The US has more nukes but you damn well know you don't need 1000 nukes to destroy any country let alone the entire human race. Literaly 10 nukes from each side is the end of the world. The only relevant point is both countries have large and capable nuclear arsenals therefore MAD is key.
For someone that started argueing about morality in the end you're the one resorting to a moral argument are you not?
China has a lot to lose? Tell that to the global south being genocided right now. This is not Olympic competition on who is suffering more. Unless it is then it is about morality after all, do you think China importing minerals from Africa is also not a moral issue? Draw a line and stick with it. If the suffering of Chinese matters than so does of every other global south worker.
The only clear point is China refuses to act as an ally when it matters and where it matters. This is all. Keep your own moral judgements to yourself, or don't and embrace you were wrong. You're defending China based on a moral argument in favor of Chinese exceptionalism and I'm arguing against China on the basis they have acted at times as complacent allies of the enemies of the global south.
The most we can agree on is its obviously not their fault. But the bare minimum is
-Some useless UN resolution everyone knows wont pass anyway
-Some BS sanction that wont actualy affect Israel's economy nor military capability
-Some explicit support for Yemen's anti-shipping, instead we get Wang Yi doing a historical major blunder completely misunderstanding the ideological reasoning behind the Houthi's motivation.
(careful don't look at Chinese actions in the SCS against Philippines and others, do as we say not as we do).Instead we get
Yellen and Blinken getting state dinners and high level meetings with the CPC
Xi traveling to SF and Paris, both centers of US genocide and imperialism.
-Literaly not a single actual finger lifted against Israel or explicit support for Yemen.
This is a ridiculous conversation. Who the fuck are you to define what the bare minimum action is and how the fuck does that not rest SOLELY on moral reasoning? Honestly, what the fuck is your logic other than "it's the right thing to do"? You have provided zero fucking material analysis of what the causal chain would be for those "bare minimum" actions to result in anything OTHER THAN moral positioning.
What the fuck do state dinners have to do with genocide other than moral positioning? What the fuck does Blinken's home have to do with genocide other than moral positioning? You think seizing Blinken's home in Beijing has a causal linkage to impacting the genocide? Or are you just expressing MORAL OUTRAGE?
Regarding Vijay, I literally said there's a big difference between what you're doing and what he's doing. Vijay is taking up an important space in the discourse and creating pressure at the international level. You are arguing on the Internet that China's other efforts in anti-imperialism and the development of socialism are to be questioned because they don't meet a standard you have declared isn't morally based but have not actually justified materially. And you think I'm punching left?
Now, this bullshit that China must act as an ally and that any claims to the contrary are espousing Chinese exceptionalism sounds like some real fed propaganda testing bullshit. China is literally fighting against the world's preeminent espionage ring on multiple fronts simultaneously. You and I have no fucking idea how involved they are with resistance movements in the region. What they aren't doing is making statements and working on non-binding resolutions. We all saw how effective USSR rhetoric was. Why would China change its geopolitical strategy at this stage when it's been working so well? Again, they have no causal power to change what's going on in Yemen or in Palestine. These things are many many many years in the making. The conditions that gave rise to these events are outside of China's influence and China getting more involved now is a matter of strategic analysis - analysis which they have no doubt done in spades with dozens of people far more informed than you or I and for much longer than you or I have been even considering it. That's how statecraft works.
You seem to think that if China doesn't meet your foreign policy standards then that means clearly they are not up to your standards but you fail to identify those things as moral standards. For whatever reason, you can't see that you are projecting that morality on to me when my position is very clear realpolitik - people are gonna die and there's nothing China can do, materially, to fix it without risking their entire project. You think there's no risks. Good for you. You have zero skin in the game, you have zero access to Chinese intelligence, you have zero access to their strategic analysis. If there was no risk, China would likely take more action than it is taking now. But it's very clearly a dangerous and complex situation that's related to all of the West's terrorism, espionage, and irregular activity in West Asia which means there's activity happening under the surface in Western cells through the region, which I shouldn't have to remind includes Xinjiang. I mean FFS even Taiwan is wrapped up in the Israel situation. It's way more complex than 'this is bad, the CPC must do something or they will be judged'.
Your only attempt at a materialist position is to say that Global South nations will distrust China because of their inaction, and yet we see Global South countries continuing to work with China, enhance their relationship, and make public positions about it. You're projecting your morality onto Global South countries as though they all have the same naive understanding that you do.
You bother me.
Blinken is the fucking Secretary of state or are you like the other dipshit I blocked that think he "some random dude"? He is literaly one of the most powerful people on the planet. Stop trying to pretend he is some guy, its embarrassing. The online left is hilarious. People here constantly cry about how the US is run by absolute demons and ghouls, nazis.
But also these ghouls? Nah just some random dude with no power at all.
Imagine the year is 1939 and you're having state dinners with Goebells. "Actualy that was perfectly fine" no communist would ever dare say with a straight face, specialy not during the hollocaust.
The relationship between Xi meeting with Biden/Blinken, is it not obvious to you? Israel/Palestine is never on the agenda.
You literaly dismissed him as a fucking pundit. Now you backtrack "oh but actualy he is doing important work". Is that because you had to google his name lol.
That is the point of an ideology and omg you actualy think its a gotcha? You actualy think communism is not a moral ideology? The irony of you trying to embarrass me for having a principled position that maybe compromising with Nazis commiting genocide is not okay.
Yes and? I did not ask for your reply and my initial reply was not to you. This is not your stance.
I initialy admitted China does good things.
But even that is not enough for this garbage Chinese chauvinistic/nationalist stance some people have. You tell me "i have it all figured out" even though its you coming with the novel and power point presentation on why China can't even look at Israel funny otherwise 1.4 billion people will die.
I'll stand with the rest of the global south denouncing nazis and their collaborators. China compromise where they shouldn't and this is costing us.
Yes its a moral stance, but it is also ideological. There is no reason to believe fascists wont turn on you just because you signed a deal. And yes China's lack of action does hurt. I pointed you to a literal global south Marxist making this point and you dismissed him as a fucking pundit.
I am not anti-China but I do prefer when communists don't compromise with Nazis. Its a moral standard. Oh no the horror.
Molotov-Ribbentrop.
You're just outing yourself as a fuck wit at this point. I have no need to defend my bona fides with regard to how much I know. You ignore most of what I write anyway so you can create false narratives that you can argue against.
Suffice to say you're finally coming around to the position that all you have is moral outrage and zero material analysis.