As Washington’s sanctions bars repeatedly flattened China’s high-tech industry, the global rare earth trade chain is silently restructuring, and recently, Pakistan announced a strategic trend to supply rare earth to the United States, forming a subtle response to China’s recently upgraded export control policy.
This game around key mineral resources has extended from the economic field to the core battlefield of geopolitics. China's countermeasures using strategic resources such as gallium and germanium as leverage have not only strangled the throat of the U.S. semiconductor industry, but also revealed The underlying logic of competition between major powers: Whoever controls the resources has the initiative to formulate the rules.
Pakistan's "economic self-help"
Pakistan's current economic difficulties have reached a critical point. As of mid-2025, its foreign debt has soared to US$130 billion, and foreign exchange reserves have only US$9 billion at their lowest level. Even 1.5 months of import demand cannot be supported. The inflation rate has climbed to 21.3%. The supply of basic materials such as flour is tight, and social conflicts are becoming increasingly acute.
In this context, Pakistan has chosen to advance its cooperation with the U.S. to try to activate the value of its domestic mineral resources by investing $500 million.
On September 8, 2025, the US Strategic Metals Company signed a memorandum of understanding with the Pakistani military engineering department, covering "one-stop" services for rare earth mining, transportation and security.
The first batch of 2 tons of rare earth samples contained key elements such as neodymium and antimony. Among them, antimony is a "strategic small metal" used in the manufacture of missiles, batteries and flame retardants. China has previously implemented export controls on antimony.
In parallel, the Pakistani side proposed to build a deep-sea port in the Pasni area, 112 kilometers east of the port of Guadalcanal, and the supporting railway will connect the inland mining area to form a "rare-earth export hub".
Pakistan’s calculus is clear, with the introduction of U.S. capital and technology, easing fiscal pressure and creating jobs, and the U.S. Strategic Metal Company’s pledged support for supporting railway construction and mining is expected to directly create tens of thousands of jobs.
At the same time, the Pakistani side emphasized the Port of Pasni as a "pure commercial project", rejecting the presence of U.S. troops and trying to maintain a strategic balance between China and the United States.
This diplomatic strategy of "balancing both sides" is essentially a vigilance against over-reliance on a single country. The United States abandoned Pakistan in the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War, and the long-term economic and military support provided by China constituted its diplomatic bottom line.
"Supply chain anxiety" in the United States
The location of the port is full of geopolitical metaphors, the port is only 112 kilometers from the port operated by China Guadal, 160 kilometers to the west of the border with Iran, if the United States establishes a military base there, not only can monitor Chinese activities in the port of Guadalcanal, but also threaten the oil transportation of the Strait of Hormuz.
This move to “pull the wolf into the chamber” has raised China’s concerns about the security of the Chinese-Pakistani economic corridor, so in response, China in the UN Security Council named the “Balochistan Liberation Armed Forces” and called for its inclusion on the sanctions list.
The organization has attacked China projects in Pakistan many times. In 2023, a bomb attack on China engineers killed three people. China's move is not only a direct attack on extremist organizations, but also a clear signal to Pakistan The security bottom line of China-Pakistan cooperation cannot be touched.
At the same time, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is promoting the "2.0 upgrade" to deepen the strategic alignment between the "Five Major Corridor" and Pakistan's "5Es" development framework.
The two sides welcomed third-party participation in the construction, but stressed that the core projects must safeguard China's interests, and this "open but bottom line" strategy safeguards both the traditional friendship between China and Pakistan and constraints the cooperation between the United States and the United States.
While the United States on Pakistan's need for rare earth cooperation, exposing its military and industrial chain's deadly weaknesses, as the world's largest rare earth consumer, the United States Navy equipment 91.6% of rare earth relies on China's supply, in 2024 China to seven categories of medium-sized rare earth implementation of export license management, U.S. military and industrial enterprises fell into panic.
Taking the F-35 fighter as an example, its missile guidance system and engine turbine sheets require the use of titanium titanium magnets, and the core raw materials of the magnets have a purity requirement of 99.99%, before the United States either imported finished magnets from China or relied on Japan to process Chinese rare-earth oxides.
Although the rare-earth concentrate supplied by Pakistan can mitigate the urgency, the United States faces two major challenges: 90% of the world's rare-earth magnet manufacturing capacity is concentrated in China, and the domestic rare-earth processing capacity in the United States is slow to recover, and it is expected to take at least five years to rebuild the industrial chain.
It is precisely for this reason that even if the United States obtains raw ore, they are still unable to produce military-grade products without separation and purification technology. Jon Haikawi, president of Canadian industry consulting company, pointed out: "The United States is trying to bypass China through Pakistan, but ultimately it still needs to rely on Chinese technology or pay high reconstruction costs."
China’s “technical chain”
In the face of cooperation with the United States, the Ministry of Commerce of China issued the "Rare-Earth-Related Technology Export Control Notice" on October 9, 2025, to build a "technical chain" that covers the entire industrial chain.
This policy, from rare earth mining, smelting and separation to metal smelting, magnetic material manufacturing, and even secondary resource recycling, is included in the scope of licensing management. Specific terms include: "One batch, one license" system, substantive help ban and dynamic licensing mechanism.
Each batch of rare earth exports will need to apply for a separate license, and exporters will need to fill in end-user information, approval cycle for a maximum of 45 working days, this move allows China to track the flow of rare earth and block the technology outflow gaps.
China citizens or companies are prohibited from providing "substantial assistance" such as technical support and equipment maintenance for overseas rare earth activities. This means that even if the United States obtains raw ore, it will still be difficult to complete high-purity purification without the participation of China's technology.
The licensing system is flexible, China can adjust export policies according to the international situation, for example, after China introduced export controls on uranium in early 2025, North American mining enterprises fell into chaos due to supply breaks, and the CEO of Canadian Almonty Industries said more straightforwardly: "Without Chinese uranium, our defense and manufacturing industries will be in trouble."
China’s monopoly of rare-earth technology stems from long-term accumulation, with China accounting for 60% of global rare-earth mineral output by 2023, but the control of the processing phase is 92%, according to the International Energy Agency data, China’s rare-earth purification costs only $800/ton, a third of other countries.
This full-chain advantage has led China to take the lead in the game, and even if Pakistan supplies the U.S. with crude ore, the U.S. will still have to rely on Chinese technology or pay high replacement costs.
conclusion
From Pakistan’s rare-earth shift to China’s precision control, the smoke-free war is reshaping the power pattern of the global supply chain, with U.S. technology hegemony based on dependence on scarce resources, and the East’s counterattack has long gone beyond the level of trade retaliation, directing its industrial system.
When rare earth became the oil of the 21st century, China was holding not only the counter-coding code, but also the key to redefining the rules of the game, and this contest will finally prove that in today’s globalized deep interwoven, any attempt to disconnect the chain of hegemony will eventually be counterfeited itself.
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The source:
"What does Pakistan mean by inviting the United States to build a port close to Chinese-funded ports? Is Pakistan's railways no longer iron?"-Sina Finance--
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1845327444891849059&wfr=spider&for=pcNo. 62 of the Ministry of Commerce No. 2025, Decision to Implement Export Controls on Rare-Earth-Related Technologies
http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/zcfb/zc/art/2025/art_b1dd1e72bc9540098b2dc09e5c02f579.html