In the wake of the recent
un-enforceable ruling against China's South China Sea expansion and island building scheme...it's now a good time to revisit a previously discussed topic in more detail - their near total monopoly of rare-earth elements.
The Chi-Com's have everybody, especially the US over a barrel...sure it help that Obama likes to put himself over a barrel on purpose and that helps a lot...but the Neo-Keynesian sellout by the Ruling Class gave China our balls on a silver platter, so naturally they feel bold on a number of fronts. And the think is with the Chinese people seem to forget is their sheer numbers...sure their economy has serious structural issues and any collapse in the West and especially America will have serious impacts for their economy...but they have the numbers to weather it, they have to numbers to weather any military adventures that might arise...they have no qualms about losing millions of people, the West and America especially cannot say the same.
China dominates the rare-earth market and it is for economic and proprietary reasons...and the impact on defense related application cannot be understated.
If there is to be another outbreak of resource driven wars, this could be one. I'd be awfully nervous if I was Australia and Japan, Japan because of its dependency on others, Australia for its own reserves people lust after.
Between this and oil and precious metals...the resource wars could be warming up for an eruption.