I have to agree. The other thing the article fails to mention is how China has invested heavily in other resource production like rare earth metals which are needed for robots and just about all modern things.
They could price gouge us at any moment and they know it. And when they do it will take us forever to build these mines / plants.
That's the thing the article also gets wrong. It takes time and money to keep up and to even copy (robots).
"They could price gouge us at any moment and they know it. And when they do it will take us forever to build these mines / plants."
They tried. It didn't work. Molycorp got the Mountain Pass rare earth mine in California going again, with pollution controls that satisfied even the Sierra Club. Another company got a mine going in Australia. Techniques were developed to reduce rare earth consumption for motors. Rare earth demand dropped. Price crashed. China gave up on restricting exports. Molycorp went bankrupt, but the Mountain Pass mine is still there, although not running.
It's for sale. Want to buy the world's most advanced rare earths mine?
They haven't invested in rare earth production so much as they have sacrificed the environment significantly for it. The article is bunk, but I totally expect China to be a barren toxic wasteland if they don't change their export-oriented development philosophy (and they haven't, inspite of what Xi is saying these days).
They could price gouge us at any moment and they know it. And when they do it will take us forever to build these mines / plants.
That's the thing the article also gets wrong. It takes time and money to keep up and to even copy (robots).
I really can't agree with much in the article.