China Warns US Could ‘Spark World War III’ by Dumping Country’s Mineral Supply
China would consider it tantamount to an act of war
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China has warned the United States could “spark World War III” by attempting to decouple from the Chinese minerals industry by developing its own supply.
The state-run Global Times said China would consider it tantamount to an act of war if the U.S. diversifies too much because Beijing sees decoupling as preparation for “an all-out conflict” with America’s “strategic competitors” that could escalate into “World War III.”
The U.S. and its NATO allies could have no plausible reason for decoupling from peaceful China except “anxiety" that they would lose their supply of precious minerals by starting a war.
The Global Times also noted the U.S moves to secure alternate supplies of antimony, a mineral that is “critical to the defense-industrial supply chain and is needed to produce everything from armor-piercing bullets and explosives to nuclear weapons as well as sundry other military equipment, such as night vision goggles.”
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“Antimony is now on the front line of recent congressional efforts to shore up the strategic reserve of rare earth minerals, known as the national defense stockpile," the outlet wrote.
"The stockpile includes a multitude of other minerals critical to the defense-industrial supply chain such as titanium, tungsten, cobalt and lithium, and lawmakers expect this to become insolvent by fiscal 2025 without corrective action,” the Chinese propagandists mused darkly.
Washington is using NATO to prepare for an all-out conflict with its strategic competitors, which could spark World War III, said analysts, as the US is pushing decoupling or reducing reliance on China in fields like critical mineral resources. https://t.co/uSTexNdkTb
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) June 15, 2022
The Global Times then reassured itself that nothing America does could “have a significant impact on the Chinese industry,” due to many of its customers being in Southeast Asia.
The U.S. supposedly cannot compete with China’s rare-earths industry, which is “very mature in terms of purification, cost control, and capacity management.”
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“Fixing ties with China and making joint efforts to strengthen cooperation is less costly than pushing decoupling, and the problem is the U.S. is driven by a problematic strategic mentality,” the Chinese Communist paper added.
But the Global Times revealed their anxiety at the end of the article when it took special umbrage at suggestions the U.S. can diversify its supply chain by stepping up cooperation with antimony-rich nations in the Chinese-Russian orbit such as Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
“China, Russia, and Central Asian countries should be careful of such intentions from the U.S.,” the Global Times shrieked, warning that partnership with America will only lead to “chaos via measures like color revolutions.”
The paper also noted the U.S. House Armed Services Committee did indeed notice that America’s military is heavily reliant upon Chinese mineral supplies to manufacture its ammunition.
House Armed Services has proposed legislation to create a better supply chain that would be less vulnerable to disruption by the hostile governments in Beijing and Moscow, which are currently the Number 1 and 2 suppliers of antimony.
Tajikistan is Number 3, and U.S. analysts believe its production could be increased enough to break China’s stranglehold on the market.
