Rare earths 'united front' fig leaf to hide fractures: China Daily editorial

Based on some Western headlines about rare earths — a shiny new United States-European Union minerals pact and G7 hand-wringing — one might mistakenly think China has suddenly flipped a switch and plunged the global economy into darkness. In fact, what's really flickering is some Western politicians' sense of the West.

The latest burst of China-bashing over rare earth exports says less about Beijing's behavior than about these Western politicians, who are scrambling for a unifying scapegoat after the current US president's return to power rattled the furniture of alliances with the US.

When US tariffs rain down like confetti, when "national security" is used as a blunt instrument against allies, and when the US administration starts eyeing Greenland the way an unbounded imperialist power of the past viewed a "virgin" landmass, alliances naturally are shaken. And when alliances wobble, politicians go hunting for a field where they can still pretend to hold the line.

Enter rare earths — obscure, essential and conveniently technical enough to sound apocalyptic.

The story being sold is familiar: China is "weaponizing" resources, "coercing" the West, and reminding everyone that it remains, deep down, an "ideological foe". These cliches are nothing but a Cold War script dusted off and reissued with greener packaging. The implication is that no matter how tightly China is woven into the global economy, it can never be trusted, only managed, hedged and feared.

What gets left out is the reality on the ground, which is far less cinematic.

According to China's Ministry of Commerce, export controls on certain rare earth items are legal, limited and aligned with international practice for dual-use goods. They are not bans. All qualified and compliant applications for civilian use have been approved. The numbers matter: the US Commerce Control List covers more than 3,000 items; China's dual-use export control list covers about 900. Washington's "de minimis" threshold for export controls can be zero percent. Beijing's approach, by comparison, is described — even by its critics — as narrower and procedural.

More inconvenient facts intrude.

China assessed the impact on global supply chains in advance. It notified trading partners through existing dialogue mechanisms. It has promised to speed up licensing, expand general licenses, and introduce exemptions. For a country that is the world's manufacturing hub — whose own economic security depends on stable, predictable supply chains — deliberately blowing up those chains would be an act of self-harm. Of all major economies, China arguably has the least interest in "weaponizing" global industrial turbulence.

Yet nuance doesn't forge alliances. Fear does.

The timing of the China-bashing is especially revealing. China-EU and China-US trade disputes have recently been kept on a track of consultation and negotiation. That's precisely when the volume on the "China threat" narrative suddenly gets turned up. Japan, too, has its reasons to amplify the noise, as one of the gung-ho cheerleaders. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's refusal to retract her erroneous remarks on the Taiwan question in the Diet last November, which triggered a diplomatic crisis with China, has further strained ties, with economic spillovers that include anxiety over access to China-sourced rare earths. Externalizing that tension as part of a grand China showdown is politically convenient for Tokyo.

What these cheerleaders of this narrative won't mention is that the most immediate, destabilizing threat to Western economic security is their own "ally". The US administration's serial coercive moves — tariffs wielded like cudgels, security guarantees treated as transactional, allies pressured and humiliated — have done more to fracture trust than any Chinese licensing procedure ever could.

By antagonizing China — a consistent supporter of multilateralism and economic globalization — those demagogues risk accelerating exactly what they claim to fear: a divided economy with higher costs. "Decoupling" is expensive. Fragmentation is inefficient. Ideological chest-thumping doesn't keep factories running.

There's also a whiff of psychological projection hanging over this debate.

Those most fluent in weaponizing trade, technology finance and resources are often the quickest to accuse others of doing the same. It's a familiar narcissistic reflex: blame outward, absolve inward and assume entitlement to all the benefits with none of the responsibilities. In that mirror, the economy that insists on its autonomy looks like a "threat" because the accuser knows exactly how they themselves would behave with unchecked power.

The tragedy is that this mindset is infecting politics in some Western capitals, crowding out real statesmanship. Leadership is replaced by performance; cooperation by coercion; truth by a chorus of talking points. Some otherwise thoughtful officials and commentators — self-appointed guardians of so-called Western "values" — fall into the trap, dutifully echoing the rhetoric, harping on ideology when the facts are stubbornly mundane. China, a partner, is rebranded as a "menace"; the real source of instability is recast as indispensable "leadership".

Stirring the water to fish from it has always been a shortsighted move. It serves narrow political ends, not long-term global stability. Rare earths are critical, yes. So are trust and honesty. If the West wants resilience, it might start by resisting the urge to turn every supply chain into a battlefield — and by recognizing that not every problem in its economies is caused by other countries, even if it's convenient to pretend otherwise.