Lin Jian hosts a regular press conference (data map)

According to the Beijing Daily, there were questions from journalists, and recently there were media reports that Pakistan used Chinese equipment and technology to export rare earth to the United States, triggering China's introduction of new rules to strictly regulate the export of rare earth-related technology. Some of the media published videos and articles, saying "Pakistan donated rare earth samples to the United States, and agreed to conduct rare earth cooperation.

Lin Jian said that China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic partners, and the "iron friendship" between the two countries has grown stronger over time. The two sides have always maintained a high degree of strategic mutual trust and communicated closely on major issues related to the common interests of both sides. "As far as I know, China and Pakistan have communication on Pakistan-US mineral cooperation." Lin Jian of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs pointed out that Pakistan emphasized that the exchanges between Pakistan and the United States will never harm China's interests and China-Pakistan cooperation. The ore displayed and presented by Pakistani leaders to American leaders is the raw ore sample of eight precious stones purchased by staff.

Pakistani Leaders Show and Donate Mines to Trump (Photo/Foreign Media)

¡°The relevant reports you just mentioned, or the lack of understanding of the facts, or the capture of the wind, or even the provocation of separation, is lacking in the basis,¡± Lin said. Lin½£ stressed that the Chinese side recently released the export control measures on related items such as rare earth, with Pakistan has no connection, is the Chinese government in accordance with the laws and regulations to improve its own export control system, aimed at better safeguarding world peace and regional stability, and fulfill international obligations such as anti-proliferation.

Extended reading

China offers new rare earth regulations, and Trump makes another "threat"

On October 9, the Ministry of Commerce of China issued two announcements on strengthening export controls on rare-earth-related objects, some foreign media are clearly unable to sit.

The same day, the U.S. Wall Street Journal published a report that said that China's latest introduction of rare-earth measures was considered to be an almost unprecedented (a unprecedented) export control, giving itself a larger code in trade negotiations.

¡°These rare-earth minerals and their refining capabilities are the foundation of modern civilization,¡± said Dean Ball, who recently resigned as a White House AI policy adviser and now senior researcher at the U.S. Innovation Foundation, saying that given the importance of AI capital spending for the economy, if these regulations are strongly enforced, it could lead to a recession in the U.S. economy.

"This is the equivalent of an economic nuclear war-intended to destroy the American AI industry." Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the American think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator, described this to the Wall Street Journal.

On October 9, local time, U.S. President Donald Trump said at a White House cabinet meeting that Treasury Secretary Bessent and Commerce Secretary Lutnik would discuss a response plan if we import large amounts of goods from China, and maybe we would have to stop doing so."Trump threatened so, while a White House official revealed that China's new rules were announced without notifying the United States in advance.

On October 9, 2025, U.S. President Trump delivered a speech at the White House Cabinet meeting.

Rare earth metals and magnets are the core materials for high-tech products such as smartphones, electric vehicles, and fighter jets. China has long realized its importance and spent decades establishing a dominant position in global rare earth mining and processing. Data shows that China controls about 70% of the world's rare earth mining, 90% of separation and processing, and 93% of magnet manufacturing.

According to the new regulations announced by China's Ministry of Commerce on October 9, China will implement export controls on some overseas rare earth-related items and rare earth-related technologies containing Chinese ingredients. According to the Financial Times, this means that all magnets that contain Chinese rare earth components or are produced by Chinese rare earth mining, smelting and magnetisation technology need to be approved by foreign companies when exporting them.

The new regulations coverage contains 0.1% or more of China's rare earth components, foreign-made rare earth magnets and some semiconductor materials, as well as the items listed using rare earth mining, metallurgy separation, metal metallurgy, magnetic materials manufacturing, rare earth secondary resource recycling and recycling related technologies produced abroad, these items will apply from December 1; for the items listed originated in China, the new rules will be implemented immediately.

In addition, for most export licenses for military use, China is "principally not permitted"; China will also "approve case by case" for export applications involving the development of AI with potential military uses.

The semiconductor supply chain is vulnerable to such initiatives in China today, as large chip factories rely on providing dedicated equipment, sophisticated processes and the final packaging of the enterprise ecosystem.

In the past, both the Trump and Biden administrations have supported this industry through subsidies and other policies, but local production capacity as a whole is still in its infancy. "This is a real pain point for AI companies in the U.S.," said Joseph Hoefer, chief AI officer at lobbying firm Monument Advocacy.

In April, after the Trump administration abused high tariffs on China, China subsequently included rare-earth goods into the scope of export controls. Foreign media generally believed that China's initiative to implement rare-earth export controls hit the U.S. car supply chain, forcing the Trump administration to sit at the negotiating table. Since then, the rare-earth issue has repeatedly emerged in several rounds of China-U.S. trade negotiations, and the timing of the new regulation is close to the time of the meeting of the two heads of state speculated by the outside world.

¡°The choice of this moment is very strategic,¡± said Gracelin Baskaran, a key mineral expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), analyzing that ¡°China is just putting a new batch of chips on the negotiating table.¡±

The Wall Street Journal quoted suggestions from former government officials and experts that the United States may respond by imposing tariffs, cutting off China's access to Western semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and accelerating the construction of local rare earth production capacity.

Currently, U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods range from 30 to 50 percent, higher than the level of trade agreements with Vietnam, Japan and Indonesia.

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post said that in order to reduce its dependence on China's rare earths, the United States has increased its efforts to increase domestic production and adopt alternative materials. At the same time, it is also seeking to establish strategic partnerships with third countries, and China's new announcement may hinder these efforts of the United States.

Baskaran commented that China's new regulations will obviously pose a challenge to the plans of the United States and its allies to promote the construction of their own industrial chains, and at the same time, they will prevent any potential "technical capability leakage" in the process of cooperation between Chinese enterprises and foreign counterparts.

Reuters also pointed out that the day before China issued new regulations, U.S. congressmen clamored for a broader ban on the export of chip manufacturing equipment to China.

The Wall Street Journal quoted a source as saying that while China¡¯s decision was seen as a counterpart to recent U.S. export controls on Chinese tech companies, it was a game behind it, according to sources, China is trying to strengthen its influence on Trump to force the other side to make concessions in tariffs and technology controls.

In addition, the spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce said in response to a reporter's question about the talks between China and the United States in Spain that the two sides will discuss economic and trade issues such as unilateral tariff measures of the United States, abuse of export controls and TikTok. According to the report, China's latest rare earth-related measures are precisely the strategy adopted to achieve the goal of requiring the US to cancel tariffs and export controls.

Reuters noted that on October 9, in addition to issuing two announcements on strengthening export controls on rare earth-related items, China also announced several additional announcements on the same day, not only adding several new rare earth elements and dozens of rare earth processing equipment to the export control list, but also involving superhard materials, lithium batteries and artificial graphite anode materials. The report believes that these measures are very important for trade negotiations between China and the United States and will help enhance China's influence.

On October 9, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce answered a reporter's question on strengthening the export control of rare earth-related items, saying that rare earth-related items have dual-use attributes for military and civilian use, and it is an international practice to implement export control on them. To this end, the Chinese government controls some overseas rare earth-related items containing Chinese ingredients in accordance with the law, with the aim of better safeguarding national security and interests and better fulfilling international obligations such as non-proliferation.

As a responsible big country, China's implementation of controls on related goods reflects the consistent position of firmly safeguarding world peace and regional stability, and actively participating in international efforts to prevent proliferation.China is willing to strengthen communication and cooperation with all parties through the multilateral export control dialogue mechanism, promote compliance trade, and guarantee the security and stability of the global industrial supply chain.