Chinese Exports of 2 Critical Minerals Plunge Despite Rebound of Rare Earths
Udumbara
China’s exports of two key minerals, germanium and antimony, have fallen sharply, despite its rare earths exports rebound sharply after reaching a trade deal with the United States.
Observers say the Chinese communist regime is still trying to control the critical elements used in the high tech sector, as the competition with the United States continues.
Germanium and antimony are used in weapons, telecommunications, and solar cells.
China’s exports of antimony and germanium in June fell 88 percent and 95 percent respectively from January, according to data released by the regime’s General Administration of Customs on July 20.
China is the world’s largest miner and refiner of these two mineral elements.
Antimony and germanium were added to China’s export control list in 2023 and 2024, respectively. China banned exports of antimony and germanium to the United States in December 2024 in retaliation for its chip restrictions imposed on China during trade disputes.
China added rare earths to its export control list in April, causing a sharp drop in exports and forcing some European and American automakers to suspend some production lines. After the trade agreement reached between China and the United States in June, China’s rare earth exports rebounded strongly, with exports of rare earth magnets to the United States surging more than seven-fold from May.
Since the end of 2024, the United States has been purchasing antimony and germanium through third countries such as Thailand and Mexico to circumvent China’s export ban. As a result, these two countries jumped to be among the top three markets for China’s antimony exports, from outside the top 10 a year ago.
However, China’s antimony exports to Thailand have plunged 90 percent after hitting a record high in April. China’s antimony exports to Mexico have not grown since April.
The sharp drop in exports coincides with China’s crackdown on the smuggling and transshipment of key minerals.
The spot market price of high-purity germanium has more than doubled since China imposed export controls. The price of antimony has almost quadrupled since May last year.
As to the exports difference, Shen Ming-shih, director of the Division of National Security Research at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times that currently, the demand for rare earths in Europe, the United States, and Japan is mainly for rare earth magnets, a key component in the automotive industry.
In the recent trade negotiations with the United States, “China may have to open up rare earth magnets, which are in more urgent demand,” Shen said.
Germanium and antimony are critical to the development of satellites and high-tech weapons, Shen noted. “In this case, China is certainly not willing to open such exports immediately.”
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Shen said that the United States’ main goal in negotiations with China is for “China to lift the export ban,” not just obtaining germanium and antimony through transshipment via Thailand or Mexico, or through other channels.
“In addition to forcing China to lift the export ban through tariffs, how to reduce or avoid dependence on China’s rare earths is also one of the main ways to for the United States to deal with the issue,” Shen said.
China’s continuing export ban on antimony and germanium “may cause a certain degree of disruption in the United States AI industry or high-tech industry, especially electronics, in the future,” Yeh Yao-Yuan, professor of political science and international studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, told The Epoch Times.
The United States requires most countries that have contact with the U.S. to stop helping China transship its goods to the United States in the current tariff negotiations, Yeh noted. “So the transshipment of these key minerals has basically been broken. That’s why the export number has dropped,” Yeh said.
China and the United States have not yet completely decoupled in the rare earth and key minerals supply chain, Yeh said, “and there may be no way to decouple in the short term.” The basic approach of U.S. companies may be to find ways to purchase in large quantities to stock up first, whenever China releases them, Yeh said.
In the longer term, he said that the U.S. policy has been to develop the third-party suppliers, such as Ukraine and Greenland, “that is, to stop the United States from completely relying on China for the supply chain of rare earths.”
