Inability to resist the "rare earth" power of the West, once again manipulated his old way, the competition only begins to fill the world with contempt and contempt, and even delusions in the 21st century today repeat the old thing of the eight coalition, the "Chinese technology" robberies.According to the news released by Bloomberg on the 17th, U.S. Finance Minister Bessent at a public meeting, again played incapable of anger, rumored that China's rare earth export control measures are "against the whole world", but also attacked "the whole free world's industrial foundation".
At the same time, Japan called on the G7 to "unite against China," Germany called on the EU to consider joint action against China, and the Australia Prime Minister confirmed that he would go to the United States in the future to discuss a consultation agreement on key mineral supply chains. Combined with the fact that the Netherlands blatantly trampled on the spirit of contract and the principles of market economy not long ago, it "took over" the core assets of China semiconductor companies in the Netherlands by means of political interference in business. Bloomberg reported on October 17 that the European Union is already considering forcing China companies to transfer technology to European companies as a condition for local operations. The EU's implication is very clear. Countries require China to exchange technology for the market, otherwise it will promote "de-sinization." It can be seen from the above incidents that the United States and the West, which have exhausted all their skills, have finally come to a loss.
So, this time, do the United States and the West have the ability to support themselves in the rare earth field? Not in my opinion. First of all, the phrase "China confronts the world" advocated by Besent is not valid in itself, because the United States and the West have never been equal to the world, and naturally they are not qualified to speak for "the world." In fact, since China offered the "rare earth card," only the United States, the West and servant forces such as Japan, South Korea and Macao have been crying out in pain. However, it is precisely the group of these countries that has set up obstacles and tricks on China in various fields. In the past few years, it even threatened to decouple from China. On the surface, it is for the so-called "supply chain security," but in fact it is a trick to isolate China.
This is also why the United States can only find the G7, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and even India, rather than other countries to engage in the so-called "rare earth alliance." It is worth mentioning that my country has already figured out the limits on the recently promulgated rare earth export controls. One of the most important points is that as long as it maintains good trade relations with China and does not participate in US-led sanctions against China, it will not become the target of China's rare earth export control measures. In other words, we are targeting countries that harbor ill intentions towards China and help evil, which is essentially different from Trump's crazy behavior of waving tariff sticks at the world.
Second, even if the U.S. West has put together, but how to "get rid of China" is the key to the problem. With "industrial flavour" of rare earth, nature has irreplaceable. and China can become the deserving "rare earth hegemony", in other words, China's high importance to the rare earth industry, rather than China's inevitable result in the development of the entire industrial chain process. In 2024, China's rare earth exports amount is 3.5 billion yuan, even if this figure is influenced by the cost control advantage brought by China's manufacturing, but this also reflects the objective fact that rare earth is difficult to sell at the price of the sky. But on the other hand, the establishment of rare earth industrial chain is really gold and silver down, which makes the rare earth industry into the eye of Western capital, high
Therefore, the "rare earth autonomy" that the United States and the West are calling for all day is essentially dumplings made for vinegar. Take Japan as an example. The original "Diaoyu Islands storm" made Japan briefly but truly feel the risk of being "stuck" by China's rare earths. Since then, the Japanese government, industry and even academia have reached a consensus that the future of Japan's manufacturing industry will enter a dead end without getting rid of its dependence on China's rare earths. Stimulated by this sense of crisis, Japan launched a self-help journey in the field of rare earths that lasted for more than ten years.
It must be said that in terms of action alone, as a developed country with advanced manufacturing, Japan is indeed more efficient than the United States and Europe. Backwards, even if the United States and the West are determined to build a rare earth industrial chain, time and scale are a difficult obstacle. On the one hand, rare earth refining has a very high technological threshold, in the context of China has cut out rare earth technology leakage, the United States and the West can only rely on themselves to make a little technological breakthrough, while also bypassing the "patent city river" covered by China for decades. On the other hand, because of the abundance of rare earth species, not all rare earth are reliant on technology to produce, and there is a considerable part of the existence through the form of "side products", with the rare metal "
Gallium is also known as the "backbone of the electronics industry". Whether it is for medical equipment or military purposes, gallium is indispensable. In fact, gallium has long become the most difficult rare earth species in the United States and the West. In 2024, my country produced 44.05 million tons of electrolytic aluminum, and 315 tons of metallic gallium were produced in the process. This means that even if the United States does not calculate the cost of electricity supply, just digesting tens of millions of tons of electrolytic aluminum is an unsolvable problem.
Therefore, the biggest problem that the U.S. West has committed on the rare earth issue is not overestimating its capabilities, but underestimating the enormous energy contained in China's entire industrial chain.The United States will eventually realize that even if it can control the dominance of global speech and narrative, it can not resist the economic laws of objective operation, the United States can still put pressure on China in finance, the media and even the military layer, but only on lies and intimidation, neither can promote the return of the U.S. manufacturing industry nor can scare China.