Highlights
- China dominates rare earth processing, controlling the entire value chain through advanced technology, patents, and academic programs.
- U.S. policy inertia has left the nation vulnerable to Chinese rare earth export restrictions and potential economic weaponization.
- The geopolitical landscape reveals a stark contrast between China’s focused industrial strategy and the U.S.’s overextended maritime empire approach.
In a sweeping geopolitical critique, Asia Times contributor Han Feizi warns that the United States has sleepwalked into rare earth dependency on China—despite two decades of warning signs. In his June 20th article, “How China Got the US Over a Rare Earth Barrel,” Feizi likens America’s imperial delusions to Michael Corleone’s doomed quest for legitimacy in The Godfather: the empire knew its fatal flaw but failed to act.
Feizi delivers a blistering indictment of U.S. policy inertia, arguing that the myth that “rare earths are not rare” enabled decades of neglect. He highlights that China now controls not just mining, but the entire value chain—from third-generation sulfuric acid roasting to over 50,000 patents and dedicated academic programs across dozens of universities. The U.S., in contrast, has no rare earth chemistry departments and has made negligible advances in processing innovation. A reality that this media platform can validate.
The author also situates this crisis within a larger historical and philosophical narrative: maritime empires like the U.S., he claims, inevitably become overextended, entangled in foreign conflicts, and blind to the extractive foundations of their power. China, by contrast, has focused inward, eschewing costly foreign entanglements in favor of building domestic industrial capacity.
Yet what Feizi omits is the live-wire context of today’s U.S.-China trade war. In 2025, China is no longer merely capable of weaponizing rare earths—it is actively doing so. May export data confirms a sharp drop in rare earth magnet shipments to the U.S., and Beijing’s export license regime now targets military end-use. Meanwhile, the U.S. response is fragmented: caught between DPA funding announcements and slow-moving public-private partnerships, and no palpable industrial policy.
Feizi’s historical lens is sharp, but the urgency of today’s supply chain collapse demands more than reflection. It requires coordinated industrial policy, technological catch-up, and strategic resolve—before the next squeeze hits harder. Rare Earth Exchanges (REEx) brings the world’s rare earth and related critical mineral data, news, and unfolding dynamics together in an easy-to-read and follow format. Perhaps then, leadership in government and corporate boardrooms will take note.
Source: https://asiatimes.com/2025/06/how-china-got-the-us-over-a-rare-earth-barrel/# (opens in a new tab)
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