Editor's Note

This article was prompted by a commentary accusing China of weaponizing its rare earth advantages. It raises a broader question: when China uses its rare earth industrial supply chain as a means of counterpressure, has the United States not likewise turned the dollar's international role, advanced technologies, influence over global markets, and alliance networks into strategic instruments?

The central concern of this article, however, is not simply to compare which side used which instrument first. Rather, it asks why economic and technological competition is increasingly extending into debates over the international order, the legitimacy of rules, and fundamental values.

The author argues that differences in political systems do not, in themselves, inevitably lead to confrontation. What deserves closer attention is how these differences manifest in divergent interpretations of national sovereignty, security, international justice, and the application of rules—and how mutual suspicion can push competition toward the formation of opposing blocs.

Rare earths are merely one window through which to observe this process. The article examines how major powers deploy their respective advantages, how they judge one another's conduct, and how the international community might preserve essential rules and opportunities for cooperation even when differences in values persist over the long term.

Some policy and industry data discussed in this article are time-sensitive. Specific export-control measures and their implementation status should be verified against the currently effective documents issued by the relevant government authorities.

Introduction

When China is accused of weaponizing its rare earth advantages, a more fundamental question deserves to be asked: has the United States not likewise weaponized its own advantages in international markets, the dollar-based system, advanced technology, and Western alliance networks?

If China's rare earth export controls are to be examined within the broader framework of international politics, then semiconductor restrictions, financial sanctions, extraterritorial jurisdiction, and coordination among allies should not simply be treated as ordinary economic and trade policies either.

The question therefore extends well beyond rare earths themselves.

Why are international economic relationships, which once generated shared benefits, increasingly being transformed into strategic instruments of mutual pressure between major powers? Why is U.S.–China competition expanding beyond trade and technology into disputes over international rules, diplomatic positions, and even fundamental values?

My view is that the immediate manifestation of this rivalry is a contest over economic and technological advantages. Its deeper drivers, however, involve different understandings of national security, sovereignty, the international order, and values. Particularly important is how differences between political systems manifest themselves as value conflicts in international relations, and how those conflicts can gradually transform specific disputes of interest into long-term strategic confrontation.

I. The United States Was the First to Weaponize Not Just Technology, but Systemic Advantages

Any discussion of China's weaponization of rare earth advantages must begin with an earlier question: how has the United States used its structural advantages within the international system over the years?

The U.S.–China trade war escalated in 2018. Huawei was placed on the Entity List in 2019. In 2020, the United States expanded the scope of its Foreign Direct Product Rule. From 2022 onward, restrictions on China's access to advanced computing chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment were progressively tightened. At the same time, Washington encouraged allies such as the Netherlands and Japan to coordinate restrictions on certain semiconductor technologies and equipment.

These measures rest on different legal authorities and pursue different policy objectives. They should not be simplistically treated as a single policy. Nevertheless, their cumulative effect is clear: the United States has increasingly used its advantages in advanced technology, critical supply chains, market access, and international regulatory networks to constrain the development of specific Chinese industries.

What makes the United States distinctive is that its advantages are not confined to any single commodity or technology.

The international position of the dollar gives Washington financial-sanctions capabilities that other countries find difficult to replicate. Its position in advanced semiconductors and related technological ecosystems allows it to influence high-end manufacturing around the world. Its extensive alliance networks enable restrictions imposed by one country to be extended into coordinated action by multiple countries. The extraterritorial reach of U.S. law further expands the scope of influence of certain policies.

Together, these advantages constitute the United States' systemic influence.

International political economy offers an important concept for understanding this phenomenon: the weaponization of interdependence. It highlights a fundamental reality: when a country controls critical nodes in international networks, those networks, originally designed to facilitate cooperation, can also become instruments of pressure.

This principle applies not only to the United States but also to other countries that possess structural advantages within critical supply chains.

Therefore, an analysis of great-power competition cannot focus solely on whether one side has used its advantages. It must also examine how those advantages constrain the choices available to other countries, and whether such constraints exceed the bounds of normal commercial competition and legitimate security needs.

If the United States uses its advantages in semiconductors, finance, and alliances to restrict the development of certain Chinese industries, the objectives, scope, and actual consequences of those measures deserve scrutiny. Likewise, if China uses its supply advantages in rare earths and other critical minerals to exert counterpressure, its actions should be assessed according to the same standards.

We cannot study how our rivals exercise power while ignoring how we exercise our own. Nor should we judge the nature of a policy solely by the identity of the country implementing it; we must examine the specific conduct and its consequences.

II. China's Rare Earth Countermeasures: The Use and Limits of Structural Advantages

China's inclusion of rare earths, tungsten, antimony, graphite, and other critical materials in its export-control framework is an important manifestation of the growing emphasis on security in international economic relations.

China's advantages in rare earths derive not merely from mineral resources, but from an industrial ecosystem developed over decades encompassing mining, separation, refining, metal production, alloy manufacturing, and permanent-magnet production. China has particularly strong industrial concentration and technological, cost, and scale advantages in parts of the medium- and heavy-rare-earth processing chain and in the supply of high-performance permanent magnets. These advantages are difficult to replicate rapidly.

They did not emerge from nowhere. They are the result of long-term industrial accumulation, market competition, technological progress, and the combined effects of a comprehensive supply chain.

As the United States continues to tighten technology restrictions on China, using China's advantages in critical minerals to increase strategic leverage has an intelligible policy rationale. Critical materials are not ordinary commodities: they are widely used in new-energy vehicles, wind power, industrial motors, electronic equipment, and defense industries. Control over key supply-chain links can, under certain conditions, translate into bargaining power.

Two questions must nevertheless be distinguished: whether countermeasures are strategically justified, and whether they can achieve their intended effects.

These are not the same thing.

Export controls can increase supply-chain pressure on counterparties in the short term, highlight China's industrial advantages, and create room for negotiation. But if controls are too broad, lack predictable implementation, or are perceived by other countries as a long-term supply risk, they may also stimulate investment in alternative suppliers, technological innovation, material reduction, and recycling.

Japan's efforts to reduce its dependence on Chinese rare earth supplies after 2010 offer a case worth examining. Building overseas rare earth mines, separation facilities, and magnet-production capacity often requires considerable time and faces cost, environmental, technological, and market risks. But these obstacles do not mean that substitution will never occur.

China's advantages are real, but they are not permanently immune to the passage of time.

The question worth discussing, therefore, is not whether China can use its rare earth leverage, but how it should understand and deploy that leverage. Is the objective to establish deterrence and secure room for negotiation, or to constrain a rival over the long term? Different objectives require different policy designs and entail different costs and risks.

Strategic advantage lies not merely in possessing the power to exert influence, but in knowing how to use that power—and how to avoid turning today's advantages into tomorrow's incentives for others to escape dependence.

China's rare earth controls did not emerge in isolation from the international context. But neither should every Chinese countermeasure automatically be regarded as inevitable, justified, and effective simply because the United States acted first.

A persuasive analysis must recognize the pressure generated by America's use of systemic advantages while also assessing the benefits, costs, and long-term consequences of China's own policies.

III. The Fundamental Question: How Do Differences Between Political Systems Become Conflicts of Values?

If U.S.–China competition were merely a contest over economic interests and technological advantages, the two sides could, in principle, renegotiate their interests, adjust their policies, and maintain cooperation while competing.

Reality is more complicated.

The United States and China differ not only over industrial competition, military security, and international influence, but also over national sovereignty, political freedom, development models, the international order, and the legitimacy of international rules.

It would nevertheless be simplistic to argue that the two countries are bound to confront each other because their political systems differ. Countries with different political systems can maintain long-term trade relationships and build stable ties on the basis of shared interests. Institutional differences do not automatically produce hostility.

What truly matters is how those differences manifest themselves as value conflicts in international relations.

When the United States views China's development model, political system, and international influence as challenges to the liberal international order, economic and technological issues can be incorporated into a much broader national-security framework. Problems that might otherwise be resolved through market competition begin to be interpreted in terms of institutional security, strategic advantage, and the future of the international order.

Conversely, when China interprets U.S. technology restrictions, alliance coordination, and the application of international rules as pressure on its sovereignty, security, and right to development, American policies cease to be viewed merely as individual trade or technology measures. They become more readily understood as part of a broader effort to constrain China's development trajectory.

The two sides thereby enter a mutually reinforcing cycle of perceptions.

One side believes its restrictions are intended to safeguard security, protect technological advantages, and uphold the international order. The other believes those measures are designed to narrow its development opportunities, constrain technological progress, and interfere with its independent choices. The countermeasures that follow are then cited by the other side as evidence that its original threat assessment was correct.

Competition consequently ceases to be confined to a particular product, technology, or round of trade negotiations. It increasingly becomes an overall judgment about the other side's political system, strategic intentions, and the legitimacy of its international conduct.

This is where value conflicts play an important role in great-power relations.

Institutional differences constitute the objective background. Value conflicts are the way those differences manifest themselves in judgments about international conduct. The formation of opposing blocs may follow when such conflicts become increasingly politicized and securitized.

Value conflicts are not necessarily the original cause of every dispute. But they can become an important force prolonging and expanding those disputes.

IV. From Ukraine to the Middle East: Why International Justice Has Become Part of Great-Power Competition

The Russia–Ukraine war, Hamas's attacks on civilians, international legal controversies surrounding Israeli military operations, and the differing positions taken by China, the United States, and other countries all demonstrate that international relations involve not only calculations of interest but also judgments about the legitimacy of conduct.

The facts, legal character, and responsibilities associated with these events are different and should not be treated as equivalent. Yet they raise several unavoidable questions.

How should national sovereignty and security be defined? What constraints should apply to violence against civilians? Should international law be applied consistently? Can countries adopt different standards when assessing similar conduct simply because their strategic interests differ?

These questions directly affect the credibility of international rules.

The United States and its European allies emphasize Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity and oppose Russia's use of force to alter international borders. China also emphasizes sovereignty, territorial integrity, security concerns, and the political settlement of conflicts, while differing from Western countries in its characterization of certain issues and in its diplomatic formulations.

In the Middle East, countries also differ in their political narratives and policy positions concerning Hamas's attacks on civilians, Israel's security rights, the rights of the Palestinian people, and the legal limits of military operations.

The real task is not to simply designate one side as righteous and the other as hypocritical. It is to examine whether each side consistently applies the principles it claims to uphold.

If sovereignty is emphasized only when a particular country is involved, if demands to protect civilians change according to the identity of the actors, or if international law is invoked to constrain other countries only when it serves one's own strategic interests, then confidence in international rules will erode.

This problem of selective application is not unique to any one country. It is a persistent risk in international politics and an important source of deepening value conflicts among states.

Yet another mistake must also be avoided: the fact that countries pursue their own interests does not mean that all claims about values are merely disguises for those interests. Nor does the existence of double standards in some countries mean that international law and universal principles have lost their significance.

Quite the opposite. Precisely because national interests can influence how rules are applied, it is all the more important to uphold standards that can be mutually scrutinized and that impose reciprocal constraints.

The value of international justice does not lie in its ability to favor the position of a particular country. It lies in its capacity to constrain that country's own conduct even when doing so runs counter to its interests.

When countries compete not only over interests but also over what constitutes legitimacy, what constitutes a threat, and which rules should apply, individual disputes become more difficult to confine to their original scope. Value conflicts thereby become an important factor limiting the space for international cooperation and one reason U.S.–China relations cannot be fundamentally improved through trade negotiations alone.

V. How Value Conflicts Drive the Escalation of U.S.–China Competition

Value conflicts do not mean that the two sides must inevitably move toward comprehensive confrontation. The real danger arises when these differences interact with security dilemmas, competition for power, and domestic political dynamics, leading each country to interpret the other side's specific actions as manifestations of a broader threat.

This process has three interconnected stages.

First, differences in values influence threat perceptions. The same technology, investment, or supply-chain arrangement may be viewed by one side as normal economic development and by the other as a potential strategic challenge.

Second, threat perceptions drive the securitization of economic relations. Advanced semiconductors, critical minerals, financial networks, investment, and technological cooperation are increasingly incorporated into national-security policies. Resources once allocated primarily according to cost and efficiency become subject to political and strategic objectives.

Finally, policy restrictions deepen distrust. One side imposes restrictions; the other retaliates. The retaliation is then interpreted as evidence supporting the original threat assessment. Both sides believe they are acting defensively, yet their actions may jointly intensify competition.

This is a classic security dilemma: measures taken by one country to protect its own security may be perceived by another as a threat, prompting further countermeasures.

Value conflicts make this dilemma harder to resolve because the two sides may disagree not only over specific interests, but also over each other's intentions, the legitimacy of the rules invoked, and the ultimate objectives being pursued.

Consequently, the long-term nature of U.S.–China competition cannot be explained solely by trade disputes, nor can it be reduced to a simple confrontation between two political systems. It involves shifts in the distribution of power, industrial competition, military security, domestic politics, and competing understandings of the international order.

The particular importance of value conflicts lies in their ability to give these concrete disputes broader political meaning, thereby influencing the boundaries of cooperation, the choice of allies, and judgments about the legitimacy of international conduct.

This also explains why a trade agreement can be reached, or a particular export restriction adjusted, while the broader strategic rivalry continues.

Specific interests can be renegotiated. Deeper distrust does not disappear automatically after a single transaction.

VI. The Rare Earth Advantage Has a Window of Opportunity, but Strategic Competition Has No Simple Endpoint

Returning to rare earths, China possesses significant industrial advantages. Whether these advantages can be translated into lasting strategic influence, however, depends on multiple conditions.

On the one hand, China's integrated rare earth industrial chain, processing capabilities, accumulated technological expertise, and cost advantages are difficult to replicate completely in the short term. On the other hand, other countries are gradually reducing their dependence on China in certain critical segments through overseas investment, supply-chain diversification, technological innovation, and recycling.

Building alternative supply chains takes time and requires sustained economic returns. Even if a project achieves a technological breakthrough, it will not necessarily become a competitive source of supply if its long-term costs are too high, it lacks stable customers, or it cannot secure continued investment.

China's rare earth advantages are therefore neither a strategic resource that can be used indefinitely without consequences nor a short-term advantage certain to disappear rapidly.

The more important question is how China can protect its industrial interests while avoiding the creation of a lasting expectation among other countries that dependence on Chinese critical materials will expose them to unpredictable supply risks whenever political relations change.

If that expectation continues to strengthen, alternative supply chains may attract strategic investment beyond what short-term commercial returns alone would justify. China's market advantage today could, paradoxically, become a reason for other countries to invest in escaping dependence tomorrow.

This does not mean that China should refrain from using export controls. All countries need to protect national security in accordance with their laws and may need to regulate items involving military applications, sensitive technologies, or specific security risks. But the scope of controls, licensing procedures, transparency in implementation, and predictability of policy all affect their long-term consequences.

Mature strategic management must consider both short-term deterrence and long-term competitiveness. It must recognize the negotiating space created by existing advantages while also accounting for the countervailing effects of excessive reliance on those advantages.

The United States, too, must confront the long-term consequences of weaponizing its systemic advantages. Financial sanctions and technology restrictions may be effective under certain conditions, but they can also encourage other countries to seek alternative settlement mechanisms, develop independent technologies, and restructure their supply chains.

No country should assume that its present structural advantages will endure forever.

VII. The Real Challenge: Preserving Space for Cooperation Amid Value Conflicts

The United States and China face genuine institutional differences, conflicting interests, and value disputes. It is unrealistic to expect a few high-level meetings or a single trade agreement to eliminate them.

Yet acknowledging that these differences will persist does not mean accepting comprehensive confrontation as the only option.

Countries with different political systems and development paths can compete in technology, industry, and international influence while holding different positions on international affairs. The key is whether they can preserve common rules and opportunities for cooperation amid that competition, rather than turning every disagreement into a question of friend versus foe.

At least four conditions are necessary.

First, specific security concerns should be expressed through clear rules and verifiable facts wherever possible, rather than expanded into the wholesale rejection of another country's political system or development path.

Second, economic and technological restrictions should be assessed against their necessity, scope, and actual consequences.National security should not become an unrestricted justification for policy, and strategic value should not exempt control over critical resources from scrutiny.

Third, international rules should be applied as consistently as possible.Whether the conduct in question involves the United States, China, Russia, or another country, judgments should be based on the specific actions, relevant law, and reliable evidence—not on predetermined conclusions derived from geopolitical alignment.

Fourth, institutional space for cooperation should be preserved.Even when the two sides have profound disagreements over political systems, the international order, and certain security issues, they can still cooperate on climate change, public health, trade, financial stability, and other areas of shared interest.

These principles cannot guarantee that U.S.–China competition will disappear. They can, however, help prevent that competition from expanding without limits.

Value conflicts may persist over the long term, but disagreement does not inevitably amount to enmity. National interests may clash, but such clashes do not necessarily require comprehensive disengagement. Strategic competition may continue, but it still needs boundaries.

Conclusion: Rare Earths Are Only the Fuse. The Real Test Is How We Understand One Another

Returning to the original question: when China is accused of weaponizing its rare earth advantages, we can and should debate whether its export controls are justified, whether they are effective, and what long-term consequences they may produce. But we must not ignore the fact that the United States has also turned the dollar's international role, advanced technologies, influence over global markets, and alliance networks into strategic instruments.

A consistent analytical standard should not change according to the identity of the actor.

Yet the deeper issue in this rivalry is not simply whether both sides are weaponizing their respective advantages. It is why their competition has become increasingly difficult to confine to specific areas of interest.

When institutional differences manifest themselves as value conflicts, when those conflicts shape how countries understand security, legitimacy, and international rules, and when these understandings are used to define the boundaries between strategic rivals and allies, economic and technological competition acquires a much broader political significance.

Rare earths, semiconductors, the dollar, financial sanctions, and supply-chain restrictions are all instruments available in this competition. But the instruments themselves cannot fully explain why the rivalry emerged, why it continues to expand, or why the broader confrontation may persist even when individual disputes can be adjusted through negotiation.

These questions ultimately concern trust between states, the credibility of international rules, and whether different value systems can coexist under common constraints on conduct.

Political systems can differ. Interests can compete. Values can remain in conflict. But if each side treats its own values as the sole standard for judging international conduct, and interprets the other side's institutional differences as an all-encompassing threat, almost any economic relationship can be redefined as a security risk, and almost any localized dispute can be pushed toward broader strategic confrontation.

That is the deeper problem behind the rare earth issue.

Rare earths are only the fuse. What will ultimately shape the trajectory of U.S.–China relations is not merely which side controls more strategic resources or technological chokepoints. It is whether both sides can acknowledge each other's legitimate security concerns, uphold rules that can be applied reciprocally, and establish boundaries for competition even while value conflicts persist.

The most dangerous situation in international relations is not that countries disagree. It is that they gradually lose the ability to cooperate despite their disagreements.

And a country's truly durable strategic advantage lies not only in the pressure it can exert on others, but also in whether it can protect its own interests without pushing the world toward a more divided future with even less trust.