The People’s Republic of China has just announced new export controls on rare earths, “critical raw materials required for computer chips and defense technology,” thus making “bilateral tensions” even more tense in the run-up to an expected late-October meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping (The Washington Post, October 9, 2025).
“The new directive is a clear attempt to undermine the industrial base development efforts of the United States and its allies,” said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Xi is signaling a readiness to wield economic coercion as a tool to advance national security goals and bolster China’s defense industrial base.”…
The new policies will require foreign entities exporting products even with tiny amounts of certain rare earths originating in China to apply for export licenses, as well as products manufactured using some Chinese rare earth processing technology. Beijing’s approval will also be necessary for technology related to rare earth mining and smelting, as well as the maintenance and upgrading of that equipment.
Some of the policies—which Beijing said are necessary to “safeguard national security”—are effective immediately, and some come into effect on Dec. 1.
The Commerce Ministry also spelled out that any application to use rare earths for military purposes will be denied. Export applications related to the research and production of some advanced semiconductors, as well as artificial intelligence with potential defense applications, will be approved on a case-by-case basis—a measure that is likely to have widespread ramifications for the global technology industry.
It’s never a good feeling when the totalitarian dictatorship that has virtually cornered the market on certain critical raw materials required for computer chips and defense technology decides to make it harder for your country and your country’s allies to obtain them. You start to suspect that the People’s Republic of China maybe doesn’t want you to be in be in the best position possible to defend yourself from, say, the People’s Republic of China.
However, all is not lost, for “Beijing’s rare earth ace card may not last forever,” the Post assures us. “After the April restrictions set off alarm across the private sector and U.S. government, Washington has raced to build up U.S. rare earth processing capability in places like Oklahoma.”
Yes. Though I’m pretty sure that there was concern in the U.S. about China’s chokehold on rare earths prior to April of this year.
Xi stroke?
But never mind about the rare earths. Will the expected late-October meeting between Trump and Xi really take place? The question arises because we have just been learning of a few thus-far unconfirmed reports, relayed by the YouTube channel Lei’s Real Talk, that “Xi Jinping may have suffered a sudden stroke earlier today,” i.e., Thursday, October 9.
Coup attempt?
We are a little less than two weeks away from the Chinese Communist Party’s Fourth Plenary Session, which runs from October 20 to October 23. The Trump-Xi summit was to take place about a week after that. Yet even before the real or fake reports of Xi’s stroke, CCP watchers had been on the edge of their seats because of earlier real or fake reports that an anti-Xi faction in the Party is plotting to oust Xi Jinping from power during the Plenary Session. The possibilities are the subject of a new column by James Roth.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: Will Xi Be Shucked at Fourth Plenary Session?
StoptheCCP.org: The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of Rare Earths
Truth Social: President Trump’s response to China’s new export controls
