Shannon Brandao
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From The article: "WaPo [excerpt]: A new front has opened in the intensifying U.S.-#China #tech war: This time, it’s over the metals needed to power #electricvehicles and make the computer #chips and #electronics that fuel the U.S. #economy.
And Beijing has made clear its restrictions on #criticalminerals are payback for Washington’s efforts to curtain Chinese access to advanced American #semiconductors.
'This is just the beginning,' Wei Jianguo, former vice commerce minister, said in July, when China restricted exports of gallium and germanium, which are used in high-performance semiconductors, weapons systems and solar panels.
'China has many means and types of sanctions it can use. If restrictions on our high-tech industry continue to escalate, China’s countermeasures will also escalate,' he warned.
China is now doing just that. From Friday, new restrictions on another key mineral — #graphite, a soft form of carbon used in almost all electric car batteries, as well as semiconductors and #nuclearreactors — will come into effect. The rules will require exporters of high-grade graphite to apply for approval, and were announced just three days after Washington released new controls to limit #artificialintelligence chips heading to China.
It is Beijing’s newest and possibly most potent weapon to wield in its competition with Washington, one that could strike at the heart of American efforts to create #green jobs while weaning the country off #fossilfuels.
...China is using its dominance over key materials to exert political pressure, said Jost Wubbeke, an expert in Chinese industrial policy and co-founder at Sinolytics, a research consultancy. 'The U.S. is also doing it very well, so that’s what China is trying to do.'
...It’s no accident that China dominates critical metals, including another key set of minerals: rare earths, a group of 17 elements needed for almost all of today’s clean energy technology and advanced manufacturing, from smartphones to weapons systems. Between 2018 and 2021, 74 percent of U.S. imports of rare earths came from China.
China’s control of #rareearths began three decades ago with targeted industrial policies and export subsidies, helped by cheap labor and a willingness to withstand the heavy environmental toll of mining and processing. The architect of China’s economic transformation, Deng Xiaoping, quipped in 1992 that “the Middle East has oil; China has rare earths.”
As of last year, China accounted for 70 percent of the world’s production of rare earths. China also refines more than half of the world’s lithium and 80 percent of its cobalt, both key parts of batteries, and dominates supplies of nickel and manganese."
#news #business #geopolitics