Hot Political Summer as China Throttles Rare Metal Supply and Claims South China Sea

China holds a monopoly on processed rare-earth minerals, a group of 17 metals with names like thulium and cerium, essential for modern technology. A report from the US General Accounting Service notes that, with businesses lulled by low prices, China has taken the lead in processing the minerals. Writing for the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard links the lock over rare-earth minerals to new assertion over territory in the South China Sea, and accuses China of a deliberate, strategic pattern: flooding global markets with a product, putting competitors in other nations out of business and then stockpiling those same materials to build a manufacturing base. “[T]he export limits seem designed to compel foreign technology companies to locate plants in China,” the reporter concludes. “Once again we see how China plays the globalization game, taking full advantage of WTO access to western markets without opening its own to the same degree.” – YaleGlobal