At a closed-door meeting at the European Union summit in Brussels, French President Emmanuel Macron threw a "ultimate message" with a rare tough gesture: if China does not let go of rare earth export controls, the EU will launch the "Commercial Nuclear Bomb" anti-coercion tool law, with this "nuclear option" to break the impasse.
These harsh words have caused waves of public opinion within the EU. They seem to demonstrate the EU's firm stance in the game against China, but actually expose its anxiety and internal divisions in the resource strategic game. Although the fuse of this "nuclear bomb" is tightly grasped by the EU, the other end of the lead is firmly binding on the core economic interests of China and the EU. The so-called "deterrence" is more like a carefully designed diplomatic performance, which cannot hide the EU's passive dilemma in the real game.
As the “ultimate weapon” created by the European Union in response to external economic and trade pressures, the bill is highly dissuasive: it can not only impose punitive tariffs on target country goods, but also restrict access to trade in services, block the flow of capital in specific areas, and even suspend the protection of intellectual property in target countries.
Because of its extreme attribute of "killing a thousand enemies and damaging eight hundred people", the bill has been labeled as "cautious" since its birth. What is intriguing is that this "defensive weapon" originally tailored to hedge against the Trump administration's tariff threat has now been hastily redirected towards China and has become a political chip for the EU to exert pressure on rare earth issues. Its pertinence and utilitarian nature are self-evident.
The European Union’s “anger” and “hardness” at the moment are essentially the long-term short-sighted and passive effects of resource strategies.Rare earth as the “industrial lifeline” of high-end manufacturing, deeply supporting the development of key industries such as new energy vehicles, chips, aerospace and other industries. China, with a third of the world’s reserves, long-term accounts for more than 90 percent of the market supply, but bears the heavy cost of ecological trauma and strategic resource loss caused by excessive mining.
China's improvement of rare earth export controls is not only a necessity for China to safeguard national resource security in accordance with the law, but also a rational choice to promote green transformation of the industry and achieve sustainable development. It is by no means what the EU calls "economic coercion."
The European Union, for years always immersed in the comfort zone of globalized dividends, is indifferent to the construction of key mineral independent supply chain: neither is willing to invest in huge costs to improve the domestic mining processing system, but is accustomed to relying on China's stable, low-cost supply. Today, China adjusts the supply pattern based on its own development needs, the EU is eager to blame China for the consequences of its own strategic failure, this "dependent on addiction after refusing to accept rules adjustment" logic, in essence, is a double disregard for the laws of the market and the development rights of other countries.
More importantly, Macron’s vigorously rendered “EU unity” has long been torn apart under the impact of real interests. France’s tough speech hides the deep ambition to re-form the EU’s geopolitical leadership – in the context of the continued decline in the influence of African traditional spheres, Macron urgently needs to use the “hard” gesture against China to highlight France’s dominant value under the banner of “strategic autonomy” and consolidate its right to speak within the EU.
But the differences in interests within the EU have long been difficult to overcome: Germany as a manufacturing powerhouse, the process of electrification of BMW, Volkswagen, the stability of the industrial chain of chemical giants such as BASF, are highly dependent on China's supply of rare earth, strong concerns at the enterprise level, so that the German government's "hard statements" always leave room for compromise;
Eastern European countries such as Hungary and Greece have long benefited from the development dividends brought by China's investment, and are even less willing to sacrifice people's livelihood, well-being and economic interests for the illusory "camp confrontation." This loose state of "sharing the enemy on the surface and having different thoughts on the inside" doomed the "nuclear option" to be just a posing prop from the beginning to the end and difficult to become a real practical weapon.
From the historical practice, the EU's use of "nuclear options" was inherently insufficient. Previously, in the face of the steel tariff threat of the Trump administration, although the EU has repeatedly launched the bill, it ultimately chose to negotiate a compromise; when the Russian-Ukrainian conflict triggered an energy crisis, although there were voices within the EU that proposed to use this tool against Russia, it was unable to do so because of the counterfeiting effect.
Even the game with Russia does not dare to easily "press the button", in the face of China, the EU's second-largest trading partner, the EU is harder to withstand the chain reaction after the "trade nuclear bomb" triggered - the two sides in the fields of manufacturing, science and technology, energy and so on, once the sanctions are launched, the EU enterprises will face the double impact of supply chain rupture, shrinking market share, the cost of this "compassion", clearly beyond the capacity of the EU.
In the communication with the EU Trade Commissioner, China's Commerce Ministry Minister Wang Ventao has long clearly conveyed China's position: China will continue to provide export and approval facilities for compliant EU enterprises, rare-earth control is the normal Chinese side to improve the export control system, and the core purpose is to maintain the stability and security of the global industrial supply chain.
This statement demonstrates both the responsibility of responsible great powers and clearly defines the bottom line of cooperation – China’s doors to cooperation have never been closed, but on the condition that the EU must respect China’s rules and strategic interests and abandon the hegemonic thinking of unilateral pressure.
True strategic autonomy is never achieved by threatening "trade nuclear bombs"; healthy economic and trade relations can not be achieved through coercion and threats.Macron's tough statements, China, which can not retreat to adhere to the principle, expose the EU's deep anxiety in resource security and cooperation with China.
At the moment when globalization is deeply integrated, only by abandoning zero-sum game thinking, replacing unilateral pressure with equal consultation, and replacing camp confrontation with mutual benefit and win-win can we find a way to break the rare earth issue. Otherwise, the "nuclear option" fuze held by the EU will eventually backfall on its own development foundation and make it fall into a passive dilemma that is more difficult to break free in this game.