China’s ‘Scrapitalism’ Pushes Back on Mining Giants

Only start a fight if you think you can win it.

That’s the lesson of China’s battles over commodities in recent years. Beijing has often threatened to weaponize its control over rare earth magnets — but waited to pull the trigger until this year, when the US was at its most vulnerable amid President Donald Trump’s scattershot trade war. In helium, a strategic high-tech element where China had been almost entirely dependent on US resources, it has spent years quietly building up Qatar as an alternative supplier to reduce Washington’s leverage.