IN 2019, AS China’s trade war with America was heating up, the People’s Daily predicted that China’s monopoly on rare earths, minerals crucial to the production of most modern hardware, would become a tool to counter American pressure. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you,” the Communist Party mouthpiece thundered. For years the bluster was just that. Between 2009 and 2020 the number of Chinese export controls on the books ballooned nine-fold, according to the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. Yet these restrictions were haphazard, informal and aimed at narrow targets—random warning shots rather than a strategic offensive.
As America ratchets up its sanctions against
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