It is widely recognized that rare earth elements are indispensable in modern industry, permeating nearly every critical technological field from new-energy vehicles, wind power, and photovoltaics to semiconductors, defense equipment, to artificial intelligence. The entire high-tech sector, built on electronic manufacturing, relies heavily on rare earth resources. For years, China has supplied about 70% of the world's rare earths and accounted for more than 90% of global refining capacity. This high level of concentration has given China a uniquely strategic position in global geopolitics.

Since 2025, China has adopted a distinctly new direction in its rare-earth policies. The country's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) have introduced a "dual-control" framework governing rare-earth exports. The framework features stricter export reviews with certain high-purity magnetic rare earths and related alloys added to a strategic sensitivity list, as well as tighter controls on technology outflows, placing core processes in rare-earth smelting, separation, and magnet manufacturing under the national export-control catalog. It also includes deeper domestic integration, with the two rare earth hubs Baotou and Ganzhou, coordinating the production capacity with China Southern Rare Earth Group to ensure a more unified pricing and supply management across the industry.

In the global landscape of rare-earth consumption, Europe, not the United States, is the actual primary user of China's rare-earth resources. According to EU data, the share of rare earths the EU imports from China is roughly 20 to 30 percentage points higher than that of the U.S. In 2023, the EU imported a total of 18,300 tons of rare-earth elements (REE+) from all sources, valued at approximately EUR 1.236 billion. By contrast, U.S. imports of rare-earth compounds and metals totaled about USD 170 million in 2024, with some unofficial estimates placing the figure even lower at USD 151 million. Most of these imports also originate from China. As a result, while China's rare-earth restrictions may be aimed at the U.S., it is the EU that may end up bearing the brunt.

This situation stems from China's use of rare earths as a structural lever over Europe as trade frictions between the two sides intensify. Unlike some energy resources, rare earths are hard to substitute within a short time, and the shifting of the supply chain can easily take a decade or more. As it stands, Europe's "green transition" is heavily dependent on these materials. Electric vehicles, wind turbines, and high-performance motors all require neodymium, dysprosium, terbium, and other rare earths primarily produced in China. Europe's dependence has turned rare earths into a genuine "geoeconomic anchor" in China-EU relations. According to recent reports from Bloomberg, facing tightening supplies, some German companies have already submitted confidential supply-chain information to Chinese authorities, potentially enabling China to carry out even more targeted measures in the future.

In contrast, the situation in the U.S. shows an increasingly different development. On one hand, the U.S. possesses substantial rare-earth reserves and is actively strengthening its control over these resources through extensive partnerships. On the other hand, with President Donald Trump assuming power, the U.S. has aggressively promoted energy development that helps reduce its dependence on rare earths.

Europe has become acutely aware of the issue. Its heavy reliance on rare earths has been further magnified in the context of the EU-China trade tensions. In early 2025, after the EU imposed high tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and launched investigations into China's wind and solar subsidies, Beijing initiated a review process for certain rare-earth export permits. The move provoked an immediate backlash in European media. French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking at a European Council meeting, publicly called for the potential use of the "nuclear option" to counter what he described as China's economic coercion.

The so-called "nuclear option" refers to the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI), which came into effect at the end of 2023. This legislation grants the European Union unprecedented powers to counter economic pressure, including imposing restrictions on Chinese high-tech products and downstream rare-earth goods, allowing restrictions of intellectual property rights for Chinese companies in the EU or delaying approvals, preventing Chinese firms from investing in key EU industries, and limiting EU member states from purchasing Chinese products. These measures suggest that China has already gained practical experience from its economic interactions with the U.S., so the term "nuclear option" may be somewhat exaggerated. However, it is important to note that the scope and potential use of the ACI could be broad, creating the risk of driving EU-China economic relations toward a complete decoupling, which is the worst-case scenario.

Documents from the European Commission indicate that one of the primary objectives of the ACI is to reduce strategic dependence on a single supplier. Yet, Europe's deeper contradiction lies elsewhere: without China, there is no green transition. For the EU, this implies that more than a decade of political investment could be undermined. According to estimates from the EuroGeoSurveys, the EU's rare-earth demand would need to increase fivefold from 2020 levels in order to meet its 2030 carbon-neutrality goal, while its current domestic production covers less than 1% of its consumption.

This leaves Europe in a dilemma where, politically, it must demonstrate efforts to reduce dependence, yet economically, it can hardly decouple from China. The rare-earth issue has exposed the fragility underlying Europe's concept of "strategic autonomy", while also widening its perception gap with the U.S. Washington has adopted a more pragmatic approach, relying on partners such as Australia, Canada, and countries in South America to rebuild its supply chain. Europe, by contrast, seeks to showcase its resolve through institutional countermeasures and coordinated bloc-level action, one of the key motivations behind its push for stronger G7 alignment mechanisms.

It is reasonable to conclude that, given its relatively weaker economic and industrial position, the EU is unlikely to fully and comprehensively activate its so-called "nuclear option". What is far more plausible is that Europe will continue advancing a gradual economic and industrial decoupling from China.

The more important dynamics, however, lie in the geopolitical arena. As the EU strengthens its perception of competition and confrontation with China, the negative ripple effects are likely to spread geographically, and Africa will almost certainly become a focal point. The uncertainty surrounding rare-earth supplies is already pushing Europe to approach the African continent, and its remaining path is to reassert control over African resources in a manner reminiscent of a "green re-colonization". A prevailing view within Europe's strategic circles puts it plainly: "The only viable way to escape dependence on China's rare earths is to return to Africa".

Africa has long been a major growth pole for global rare-earth resources. According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS, 2024), Africa holds roughly 20% of the world's proven rare-earth reserves. Tanzania's Ngualla deposit, Malawi's Songwe Hill deposit, Namibia's Lofdal deposit, along with several rare-earth projects in South Africa and Burundi, all have strong potential for industrial-scale development. Over the past decade, about 70% of the investment in these projects has come from Chinese capital or China–Africa joint ventures.

As China strengthens its dominance in rare earths through export controls and technology restrictions, Europe's strategic anxieties are likely to spill over first onto the African continent—primarily through three channels.

First is the packaging of resources under "green assistance". Europe is no longer intervening through traditional colonial means; instead, it is re-entering Africa through the narrative framework of green transition and climate cooperation. In 2024, Phase II of the EU's Global Gateway Initiative allocated an additional EUR 4 billion to Critical Raw Materials Partnerships in Africa. While presented as support for clean-energy development, mining governance, and environmental remediation, the underlying goal is to create structural arrangements in which resources are effectively exchanged for technology or financing.

This approach serves a dual purpose. On one level, it cloaks resource extraction in the language of sustainability, embedding European firms upstream in African mining projects through "green" standards. On another, it imposes exclusionary constraints on Chinese companies. Several EU-led cooperation frameworks include implicit provisions that limit third-party involvement, particularly by Chinese investors, in key projects. European discourse labels this "de-risking cooperation", but in practice, it functions as a form of institutionalized exclusion.

Second, there is the institutional weaponization to advance geopolitical exclusion. Europe's renewed engagement in Africa is no longer driven by individual countries pursuing commercial interests, but by a coordinated and institutionalized strategic alliance. The EU is building an EU–Africa Critical Raw Materials Security Mechanism, which plans to establish unified supply-chain transparency standards by 2026 and link them with the G7's mining transparency initiative. The essence of this mechanism is to use standards related to the environment, labor, and human rights as instruments for imposing political conditions on Africa's resource exports.

These standards may appear neutral, but they are in fact highly geopolitical. On one hand, they can restrict Chinese companies from securing projects through price competition; on the other, they allow the EU to intervene in African countries' policy choices under the name of institutional requirements. For example, through the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), the EU can determine whether African exports "meet green standards", thereby using trade measures to penalize countries that maintain close cooperation with China.

A deeper intention is to draw African resources into a secure, closed-loop system serving Europe's industrial supply chain. The EU plans to establish raw-material certification centers in Namibia, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with European authorities responsible for testing and issuing export permits. If fully implemented, this system could exclude Chinese companies from the European market even if they hold mining rights in Africa, simply because their products lack "EU-standard".

Another dimension is the implicit intervention carried out under "security cooperation". As resource competition becomes intertwined with geopolitical security concerns, Europe is shifting from an economic actor to a security actor. France, Germany, and Italy have each resumed or expanded their military presence in the Sahel, East Africa, and Southern Africa. Although framed as counter-terrorism and regional stabilization efforts, these deployments in practice serve to safeguard key mining areas and transport corridors.

In the case of Niger, after France withdrew from the Sahel in 2023, Germany and Italy each maintained small contingents under "peacekeeping missions", while the EU simultaneously signed new mineral-development agreements with Burkina Faso. This combination of "outsourced security" and "resources for stability" essentially uses geopolitical control to secure resource access.

What is even more concerning is that Europe's engagement in Africa appears to be aligning with the United States' Minerals Security Partnership (MSP). Discussions within the G7 framework are shaping a concept of a "transatlantic resource alliance", whose implicit objective is to "circumvent China in Africa". Once this model matures, the integrated system China has built in Africa that links resources with infrastructure, especially ports, railways, and smelters developed under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), could face the risk of institutional isolation.

China's rare-earth strategy is, in fact, not intended to "sanction" Europe, but is driven by dual considerations: maintaining global supply stability and safeguarding national security. Yet within Europe's public discourse, this strategy is often interpreted as "weaponizing the economy", heightening political confrontation and a defensive institutional mindset. If Europe eventually undertakes large-scale rare-earth development in Africa and incorporates it into a coordinated G7 framework, competition between China and Europe will no longer be confined to trade frictions; it could evolve into a long-term contest over who shapes the global green order.

Therefore, it is highly likely that China's mining concessions in Africa will encounter a series of disruptions, being an outcome of global geopolitical chain reactions, a cycle of "action and counteraction". Chinese stakeholders will need to pay close attention to this warning from ANBOUND, coordinate their responses early, and develop forward-looking strategies to mitigate emerging risks.

Final analysis conclusion:

China's rare-earth strategy is reshaping not only global supply and demand, but also the bargaining logic of international politics. As Europe builds defensive lines through rules and China responds with its dominance over resources and industrial chains, globalization is entering a new stage of "fragmentation and reconfiguration". Europe's reaction is marked by both anxiety and pragmatism, where it fears being excluded from China-led new-energy industries, yet it also cannot afford the cost of a full decoupling from China. Africa is likely to become the arena where this contradiction spills over, emerging as a new stage for geopolitical competition. From China's perspective, it needs to safeguard its resource security and industrial advantages while avoiding being passively drawn into a new geopolitical confrontation. Rare earths are not merely minerals; they are part of a deeper struggle over global order, industrial sovereignty, and strategic equilibrium. Hence, the use of this resource leverage requires caution.