December 03, 2024
During its Ukrainian proxy war on Russia the Biden administration and its minions have pushed China for allegedly providing support to Russia. This year it even started to sanction Chinese companies for allegedly providing 'dual-use items' to Russian businesses.
The sanctions game though can be reversed. China has several quasi monopoly positions which it can use to hit back.
In (probably) a reply to Baerbock's latest intervention, it just started to use these (machine translation):
Announcement of the Ministry of Commerce No. 46 of 2024 on strengthening export controls on Related Dual-use items to the United States - mofcom.cn, Dec 3 2024
In accordance with the relevant provisions of laws and regulations such as the "Export Control Law of the People's Republic of China", in order to safeguard national security and interests and fulfill international obligations such as non-proliferation, it has been decided to strengthen export controls on related dual-use items to the United States. The relevant matters are now announced as follows：Organizations and individuals in any country or region that violate the above regulations and transfer or provide related dual-use items originating in the People's Republic of China to organizations and individuals in the United States will be investigated for legal responsibility in accordance with the law.
- The export of dual-use items to U.S. military users or military purposes is prohibited.
- In principle, the export of gallium, germanium, antimony, and superhard materials related dual-use items to the United States shall not be permitted; the export of graphite dual-use items to the United States shall be subject to stricter end-user and end-use reviews.
Gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials are important for chip making in electronics industries and for weapon manufacturers. Graphite is necessary to make rechargeable batteries.
These commodity items are not necessarily rare but China has plenty of them and, more importantly, is nearly the only country which processes them in large quantities. The reason is that the processes to do refine the raw materials are somewhat dirty and only profitable when done on scale.
The U.S. can, and probably will, (re-)build the industries to do the processing for such items. But it will cost it lots of money and, more importantly, years to achieve that.
It will also be difficult to criticize China for fulfilling its 'international obligations such as non-proliferation' while that is a main attack point the U.S. has used against China.
But be assured that the hypocrites, like Mrs. Baerbock, will anyway try to do so.
h/t: Arnaud Bertrand
Posted by b on December 3, 2024 at 10:27 UTC | Permalink