China’s chokehold on the global supply of rare earth elements – and its recent willingness to weaponise it – will have top billing when European Union leaders thrash out an agenda over dinner on Thursday for a crunch summit with Chinese leaders in Beijing next month.
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The export restrictions, which have brought some manufacturing processes in Europe close to standstill, have leapfrogged the EU’s medley of other complaints with China to become the dominant issue in a troubled relationship.
The issue has helped to disrupt an apparent thaw in ties, causing top EU officials to turn away from softer language towards Beijing and returning the sides to the hostilities of recent years.
A diplomatic source familiar with the preparations for an EU-China summit on July 24 and 25 said that the rare earths issue was now “THE thing” between the two sides.
The controls – introduced on shipments of rare earths in April, in retaliation for US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs – have dominated every meeting between senior officials from the two sides over the past two months.
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Meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday, the bloc’s top envoy in Beijing Jorge Toledo asked China to “fix this thing even before the summit”, saying that a shortage in rare earths was hitting EU businesses “very, very badly”, Bloomberg reported.