Relying on China for essential rare earths is making us prisoners of a codependent war

Beijing has an iron grip on minerals that are crucial to weapons manufacturing, but the west must find a way of breaking free of it, writes James Kynge

- James Kynge

The term "new cold war" should be tossed on to the scrapheap. The intensifying geoeconomic competition between the US and China is so different from the cold war between the former Soviet Union and the US that drawing such parallels is unhelpful.

What we have now is a "codependent war". The US and China - as well as Europe and China - are so economically interdependent that an all-out commercial "war" between them would create mutual impoverishment. This is very different from the cold war, when the iron curtain severely limited trade and investment between the Soviet Union and the west.

The dynamics of this codependent conflict are nowhere clearer than in the continuing panic over critical minerals. In April, responding to stiff tariffs announced by Washington, China imposed export restrictions on seven rare earths - minerals that are critical to the manufacture of key technologies.

The reason that this move is causing palpitations in western capitals is because China processes about 90% of the world's rare earths, giving it an effective stranglehold over the west's ability to produce many technologies that are essential for infrastructure and national defence.