The shot was very powerful! Foreign media realized that the situation was serious! After we announced the control of rare earth technology, the German media felt that the situation was very serious! On October 9, Deutsche Welle published an article stating that China's rare earth technology control is very strong this time. These two aspects will cause great trouble to the United States and other countries.
According to the announcement of the Ministry of Commerce on October 9, this control is completely different from before. In the past, at most, it restricted the export of rare earth raw ores or single elements. This time, it directly cast the net abroad, even if it is made by foreign factories. As long as the proportion of rare earth components made in China exceeds 0.1%, and if you want to sell it elsewhere, you have to get a permission from China first.
This threshold is ridiculously low. Small chips in mobile phones, motor magnets of electric vehicles, and any high-precision product may step on the line. A spokesman for the German Ministry of Economic Affairs was anxious to say that he was "extremely worried" and also pulled the EU to engage in "localization". To put it bluntly, he was afraid that his own car companies and electronics factories would cut off supply.
What is even more severe is the blockade at the technical level. This time, core technologies such as rare earth mining, smelting and separation, and magnetic material manufacturing have been directly included in the control list, and even technologies for secondary resource recovery have not been spared.
This is no small matter. 90% of the world's rare earth refining work relies on China's technology and equipment. Although the United States and Australia have rare earth mines, the ore dug out is a pile of "dirt bumps." Without China's smelting technology, it cannot be transformed into a material that can make weapons and chips.
Previously, the American Vulcan Element Company cooperated with New Element Technology and wanted to refine rare earths by chromatography. It claimed to be able to produce oxides with a purity of 99.95%. However, everyone in the industry knows that this technology is worse than that of China, and the cost is frighteningly high. It simply cannot support mass production.
The U.S. military has now estimated the heads are big, there are data that three-quarters of their weapons key components are dependent on China's rare earth, a F-35 fighter aircraft will use 400 kilograms of rare earth, Virginia-class nuclear submarines will have to stack more than 4 tons.
According to the interpretation of the Financial Times, as long as it is a rare earth product made with Chinese technology, no matter where it is produced, China has to nod its head for export. Those ways that want to transport Chinese rare earths to a third country for processing and then resell them to the US military are directly blocked.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce also said that foreign forces had previously used rare lands in military sensitive areas and even used these weapons to provoke, this control is to break this hidden danger from the source.
The electric vehicle industry in Europe is even worse. German car companies originally relied on Chinese rare earth magnets to build motors. Now magnetic materials are separately included in the control list, and the content standards have been clarified. There is no way to smuggle them. Industry insiders predict that the price of dysprosium metal has risen from US $335/kg to US $780. With this wave of policies, it is possible to exceed US $900.
If European car companies do not get a license, they will face the risk of stopping production in early 2026, this loss is not a small number, the European Commission rushed to shout China for "reliable supply", but they themselves except to offer to go to space mining, can not find a practical alternative, that idea is criticized and unrealistic.
The United States 'dream of "de-China" supply chain has also been shattered. Last year, the Trump administration spent money to build local rare earth production capacity, but capital did not dare to enter. The reason is simple. It will take several years to build a smelter, and the technology still has to be touched from scratch. China has achieved 85% of the patents on heavy rare earth separation technology.
What's even worse is that this time, even the technology carrier was managed. It was useless for the United States to recruit China's technical talents with high salaries. The core technology could not be taken away at all. Experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that China was putting a new chess piece on the negotiating table and grasping it accurately.
The most amazing thing is the closed-loop design of this control. It not only manages items and technologies, but also the end use is stuck. It develops chips below 14 nanometers, memory chips above 256 layers, and AI projects with potential military uses. Rare earth-related items must be approved on a case-by-case basis.
This is equivalent to directly locking sensitive areas, both blocking the vulnerabilities of military use, and taking the life of the high-end science and technology industry, and also leaving the humanitarian exemption, emergency medical and disaster relief can be used, appear to be both hard and humane, so that those who accuse China of "blocking" the voice has no bottom.
Now the United States and Europe really realize that they rely not on China's rare earth mines, but on China's entire industrial chain technology capabilities that have been saved for decades, from mining equipment to the process of metallurgy, from the manufacture of magnets to the recycling technology, each link is in China's hands.
Previously, they felt that they could rely on resources to replace, now only understand that technical barriers are more difficult to break than resource barriers, Germany's voice specifically pointed out these two problems, in fact, is to see through: short-term can not find alternative supplies, long-term can not break the technological bottleneck, this is the fundamental reason for them to sit in trouble.
This wave of operation is also a wake-up to the global supply chain, the core technology in their own hands is really safe, and those countries that used to rely on "naïvism" to develop high-end industries, now have to face the reality of technology.
Former White House AI consultants at the American Innovation Foundation all admit that if this control is strictly enforced, the U.S. economy may fall into recession. This is not alarmist. After all, which of the popular industries such as artificial intelligence and new energy can't be separated from the support of rare earth technology.
Generally speaking, China did not issue a random policy this time, but calculated the fate of the global industrial chain before taking action. It not only responded to the previous abuse of technology by foreign forces, but also safeguarded its own technological advantages. It is no wonder that German media said the situation was serious. Countries such as the United States want to get rid of dependence? It's really not that easy in the short term. After all, technical accumulation cannot be achieved quickly by spending money. This trouble will probably last for a while.
According to the announcement of the Ministry of Commerce on October 9, this control is completely different from before. In the past, at most, it restricted the export of rare earth raw ores or single elements. This time, it directly cast the net abroad, even if it is made by foreign factories. As long as the proportion of rare earth components made in China exceeds 0.1%, and if you want to sell it elsewhere, you have to get a permission from China first.
This threshold is ridiculously low. Small chips in mobile phones, motor magnets of electric vehicles, and any high-precision product may step on the line. A spokesman for the German Ministry of Economic Affairs was anxious to say that he was "extremely worried" and also pulled the EU to engage in "localization". To put it bluntly, he was afraid that his own car companies and electronics factories would cut off supply.
What is even more severe is the blockade at the technical level. This time, core technologies such as rare earth mining, smelting and separation, and magnetic material manufacturing have been directly included in the control list, and even technologies for secondary resource recovery have not been spared.
This is no small matter. 90% of the world's rare earth refining work relies on China's technology and equipment. Although the United States and Australia have rare earth mines, the ore dug out is a pile of "dirt bumps." Without China's smelting technology, it cannot be transformed into a material that can make weapons and chips.
Previously, the American Vulcan Element Company cooperated with New Element Technology and wanted to refine rare earths by chromatography. It claimed to be able to produce oxides with a purity of 99.95%. However, everyone in the industry knows that this technology is worse than that of China, and the cost is frighteningly high. It simply cannot support mass production.
The U.S. military has now estimated the heads are big, there are data that three-quarters of their weapons key components are dependent on China's rare earth, a F-35 fighter aircraft will use 400 kilograms of rare earth, Virginia-class nuclear submarines will have to stack more than 4 tons.
According to the interpretation of the Financial Times, as long as it is a rare earth product made with Chinese technology, no matter where it is produced, China has to nod its head for export. Those ways that want to transport Chinese rare earths to a third country for processing and then resell them to the US military are directly blocked.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce also said that foreign forces had previously used rare lands in military sensitive areas and even used these weapons to provoke, this control is to break this hidden danger from the source.
The electric vehicle industry in Europe is even worse. German car companies originally relied on Chinese rare earth magnets to build motors. Now magnetic materials are separately included in the control list, and the content standards have been clarified. There is no way to smuggle them. Industry insiders predict that the price of dysprosium metal has risen from US $335/kg to US $780. With this wave of policies, it is possible to exceed US $900.
If European car companies do not get a license, they will face the risk of stopping production in early 2026, this loss is not a small number, the European Commission rushed to shout China for "reliable supply", but they themselves except to offer to go to space mining, can not find a practical alternative, that idea is criticized and unrealistic.
The United States 'dream of "de-China" supply chain has also been shattered. Last year, the Trump administration spent money to build local rare earth production capacity, but capital did not dare to enter. The reason is simple. It will take several years to build a smelter, and the technology still has to be touched from scratch. China has achieved 85% of the patents on heavy rare earth separation technology.
What's even worse is that this time, even the technology carrier was managed. It was useless for the United States to recruit China's technical talents with high salaries. The core technology could not be taken away at all. Experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that China was putting a new chess piece on the negotiating table and grasping it accurately.
The most amazing thing is the closed-loop design of this control. It not only manages items and technologies, but also the end use is stuck. It develops chips below 14 nanometers, memory chips above 256 layers, and AI projects with potential military uses. Rare earth-related items must be approved on a case-by-case basis.
This is equivalent to directly locking sensitive areas, both blocking the vulnerabilities of military use, and taking the life of the high-end science and technology industry, and also leaving the humanitarian exemption, emergency medical and disaster relief can be used, appear to be both hard and humane, so that those who accuse China of "blocking" the voice has no bottom.
Now the United States and Europe really realize that they rely not on China's rare earth mines, but on China's entire industrial chain technology capabilities that have been saved for decades, from mining equipment to the process of metallurgy, from the manufacture of magnets to the recycling technology, each link is in China's hands.
Previously, they felt that they could rely on resources to replace, now only understand that technical barriers are more difficult to break than resource barriers, Germany's voice specifically pointed out these two problems, in fact, is to see through: short-term can not find alternative supplies, long-term can not break the technological bottleneck, this is the fundamental reason for them to sit in trouble.
This wave of operation is also a wake-up to the global supply chain, the core technology in their own hands is really safe, and those countries that used to rely on "naïvism" to develop high-end industries, now have to face the reality of technology.
Former White House AI consultants at the American Innovation Foundation all admit that if this control is strictly enforced, the U.S. economy may fall into recession. This is not alarmist. After all, which of the popular industries such as artificial intelligence and new energy can't be separated from the support of rare earth technology.
Generally speaking, China did not issue a random policy this time, but calculated the fate of the global industrial chain before taking action. It not only responded to the previous abuse of technology by foreign forces, but also safeguarded its own technological advantages. It is no wonder that German media said the situation was serious. Countries such as the United States want to get rid of dependence? It's really not that easy in the short term. After all, technical accumulation cannot be achieved quickly by spending money. This trouble will probably last for a while.