The Taiwan issue is just one aspect of the wolf warrior diplomacy that Beijing has been pursuing for years. All of China’s external borders are mobile, in the sense that Beijing is increasingly interpreting disputed borders with neighboring countries or territorial waters in an expansionist manner. An important background to remember is that in 2020, already in full pandemic and just as global outrage over Chinese lies about Covid was peaking, Xi Jinping did not hesitate to stage armed clashes on the border with India to orchestrate another of the boundaries that he intends to reshape to his own benefit.
This China does not pose any problems of reputation, image or soft power (powers of persuasion, cultural hegemony). She doesn’t seem to need it in relation to the West. convinced that we can bow to threats and blackmail, especially in the economic sphere. He had a dress rehearsal in 2010, when he imposed a rare earth embargo on Japan (during a dispute over Tokyo’s expropriation of the Senkaku Islands). They later threaten to do the same against the United States when Donald Trump was in the White House in retaliation for his tariffs. These two facts have been underestimated in the West and especially in Europe (at least the United States has started to discuss a new strategic policy in the field of rare earths, albeit with modest results so far). We must rediscover them today, as the rare earths embargo is one of the moves Beijing has in store in its geopolitical arsenal, a retaliation that could bring us to our knees and prevent us from coming to Taiwan’s aid, even with it Economic sanctions against Beijing. The rare earth embargo — as experienced on a small scale against Japan — is an example of artificial scarcity, a case of scarcity created by one country to bend others to its will. That is, it falls under the kind of feigned scarcity we are increasingly confronted with and which we tend to mistake for a material scarcity, when in reality it is the product of conscious choices.
Rare earth a concept that has several definitions. Contains 17 elements of the periodic table, a list often expanded to include the 35 critical commodities and typically antimony, gallium, platinum group metals, beryllium, germanium, phosphate rock, borates, indium, heavy rare earth elements, chromium, magnesite, cobalt, magnesium, metallic Silicon, coking coal, natural graphite, tungsten, fluorite, niobium, praseodymium, neodymium, monazite. That being said, there’s the case of lithium used in electric batteries: neither a rare earth nor a rare mineral for Chinese renewed control in overwhelming world production. I take this information from one of the most recent and complete studies on the subject: Rare Earths, China and the Geopolitics of Strategic Minerals by Sophia Kalantzakos, translated into Italian by Egea Publishing House of Bocconi University. The author recalls how rare earths and other critical raw materials are used in the production of renewable energy and green technologies (wind turbines, solar panels and energy-efficient lighting systems), in high-tech applications (computers, smartphones, medical applications) and in the defense industry (missile guidance systems, smart bombs, submarines). Despite their crucial value, the West has allowed China to attain a dominant position unparalleled in the history of strategic material: there is no country in control of the supply of an essential element like China’s in rare earths. To use an effective image, as if the West faces a single country OPEC for oil. OPEC the oligopolistic cartel of oil-producing countries: it has 13 member states, often with conflicting interests and strategies, but even with diversity when it wanted to, caused significant damage to consumer countries (beginning with the energy shocks of 1973 and 1979). Imagine the damage an OPEC for rare minerals could do to us with only one member state, China. It should be added that the People’s Republic not only controls the mining of rare earths and other critical raw materials, but also their further processing. For now and for the foreseeable future – writes Kalantzakos – China not only monopolizes at least 93% of these materials…but also controls for many its highly specialized metallurgy and the entire supply chain, from mine to market applications. This essentially gives China control over a sizable range of inputs essential to the global economy, particularly renewable energy, high-tech, and military applications.
It is sometimes heard that the West, and Europe in particular, having placed themselves in a position to be dependent on Vladimir Putin for its fossil energy (particularly gas), risks falling into a similar dependence on in a future decarbonized stance China slide for renewable energy. However, this is not a hypothetical risk and is not projected into the future. is already a reality and is today. None of this was inevitable, China’s monopoly on rare earths and critical commodities is not natural. We gave it to him, with policy choices that I’ll tell you about in the next installment of this column.
08/09/2022, 11:49 am – change 08/09/2022 | 11:54
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