China will not be bullied into submission

In a thinly veiled warning that Beijing will not rule out using rare earths as a weapon to counter US attacks against Chinese high-tech companies such as Huawei, an official from the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner, said in an interview on Tuesday that "if any country wants to use products made of China's rare earth exports to contain China's development, the Chinese people would not be happy with that".

China possesses only 37 percent of the total global deposits of rare earths - a group of 17 metallic chemical elements that are widely used in everything from satellites and missiles to nuclear reactors and smartphones. Yet it accounts for more than 90 percent of global production as it controls almost all of the world's processing facilities.

"China could shut down nearly every automobile, computer, smartphone and aircraft assembly line outside of China if they chose to embargo these materials," James Kennedy, president of ThREE Consulting, wrote in the US publication National Defense last week, as Agence France-Presse reported.