Little starling to learn China controls a virtual monopoly over rare earth minerals, the elements required for the manufacturing of a lot of high tech stuff - including military technology - and has increasingly been limiting how much of it they make available for export - and that's making some people nervous - Japan's economy is dependent on rare minerals as is the US military.
So, let's see - China, America's chief rival for the next 50 years on several fronts, is by far the largest holder of the burgeoning US debt, which means they could basically shut down the American economy any time they wanted to - and they utterly control access to rare earth minerals, so they could conceivably shut down the American military anytime they wanted to - there are obviously mitigating conditions tagged to each of these threats, but still, the threats are hardly reduced to mere fantasy because of that.
This does not strike one as an optimal state of affairs for the US. Now, the US used to be the main source of rare earth minerals and so one imagines can address this strategic dilemma if they choose to [although there are apparently significant complications involved with mining this stuff, which is why they got out of the business in the first place] - and Japan and the US could start hoarding the minerals so as to build up a strategic reserve - but that begs the question: is China putting quotas on exports because their expansive manufacturing sector is increasingly hungry for rare minerals - or because by limiting supplies they make it harder for Japan and the US to steer excess into strategic reserves? The latter scenario would suggest to me a rather aggressive foreign policy lying in the weeds - and would seem to amount to a rather clumsy provocation since these minerals do exist elsewhere - so does that mean the intent here likely not strategic? or that China, when it comes to wielding it's new found powers, is indeed clumsy - autocracies layered with opaque bureaucratic structures do tend towards aberrant behaviour.
