China vs rest of world… bring it on
You mean China vs the crumbling western empire that accounts for around 20% of the world’s population and doesn’t actually produce much of anything? 😂
China seems incapable of reading the room/learning from recent geopolitical events. There is no turning back once economies are decoupled and bridges are burnt. It’s almost as if Xi is high on his own propaganda and forgot he has to rely on the world economy to get his fiefdom beyond the middle income trap and through the crises (demographic, environmental, economic) to come. If Europeans are willing to pay double their heating bill so not to rely on Russian gas, there’s no reason not to consider alternative producers of rare earth, which are literally everywhere.
If Europeans are willing to pay double their heating bill
We’re not willing, we’re being forced to by our scummy governments. They never asked us for our opinion.
In the long term the west will have no choice but to start creating their own supply chains, however that’s going to take many years to do. Meanwhile, China already has independent end-to-end supply chains and that means Chinese companies will have a huge advantage producing tech products using these rare metals giving China a huge market advantage.
