Highlights

• Baogang Group and Huawei strengthen partnership in AI, digital infrastructure, and intelligent mining systems
• Huawei's Xinchuang digital platform aims to replace Western tech ecosystems in strategic industrial sectors
• Collaboration highlights China's strategic approach to integrating AI and digital technologies into critical mineral supply chains

On July 9, Baogang Group, China’s largest rare earth producer, held a high-level meeting (opens in a new tab) with Huawei Technologies (opens in a new tab) to advance their collaboration on artificial intelligence (AI), digital infrastructure, and “smart mining” initiatives. Baogang lead Li Xiao met with Han Shuo, Vice President of Huawei (opens in a new tab) and CEO of its Oil, Gas, Steel, Cement, and Metallurgy Division—a specialized unit tasked with applying digital technology to China’s foundational industries.

Li praised Huawei for its longstanding support and technical leadership in AI and digital transformation, particularly in the development of intelligent mining systems and real-time industrial data platforms. He emphasized the need to deepen cooperation across Baogang’s diverse operational footprint, leveraging Huawei’s capabilities to “jointly develop new productive forces” and achieve mutual gains.

Han Shuo reaffirmed Huawei’s commitment, highlighting successful prior collaborations in data governance, industrial automation, and smart mine development. She pledged further integration of Huawei’s proprietary “Xinchuang” digital stack—a secure, domestically built alternative to Western IT ecosystems—into Baogang’s AI systems, workforce management, and decision-making tools.

Why It Matters to the U.S. and Allies

This announcement reveals far more than a corporate IT upgrade:

• Tech-Security Convergence: Huawei, under heavy U.S. sanctions, is embedding itself into the digital core of China’s most strategically vital supply chains, including rare earth mining. This tight integration of AI and industrial production under one national ecosystem presents a serious long-term challenge to Western tech and critical mineral independence.
• Smart Mining as Strategic Edge: While the West debates permitting timelines and ESG frameworks, China is digitizing and optimizing its entire upstream rare earth infrastructure, boosting safety, lowering costs, and tightening environmental controls through real-time AI.
• Digital Sovereignty at Scale: Huawei’s Xinchuang platform is built to replace Western-origin hardware, software, and data stacks. The fact that Baogang is aligning its industrial brain with this closed-loop Chinese system should prompt serious reflection in Washington, Brussels, and Tokyo.

As China fuses AI with mineral dominance, Western nations must urgently ask: Who controls the operational intelligence of tomorrow’s resource chains?

Source: Baogang Daily, July 11, 2025

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