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The
writing is on the wall, now can Europe and the US rise to the challenge
to defuse China's plan to infiltrate borrowers national assets
MSN
NEWS (THE TELEGRAPH) 15 OCTOBER 2025 -
CHINA HAS THE WORLD IN A $1TN CHOKE HOLD
The world’s investors, executives, policymakers and politicians all now keep an eye on the Truth Social account @realDonaldTrump. The president’s posts have the power to move markets and even shake up the world order.
Now there’s another habit they might need to cultivate: watching the announcements from China’s ministry of commerce.
The ministry’s initially low-key announcement last week of new regulations on Chinese rare earth exports has sent shock waves through the West.
Beijing awarded itself the power to dictate what many companies, based anywhere in the world, do with key products that contain rare earths or battery materials sourced from
China. The sweeping powers affect everything from cars to solar panels and missiles. And almost all companies affected have nowhere else to go.
“This is a completely new dawn. This no longer has anything to do with trade. We’ve morphed from a trade war into a grey-zone operation,” says James Kynge, a China watcher at think tank Chatham House.
“It’s a complete step change in China’s leverage and China’s ability to coerce not only the US, but every other country in the West, if it chooses to do so. The evidence of the past suggests that Beijing may well use this leverage. And then we’re into a whole different world.”
For years, Beijing has been building up an arsenal of economic weaponry. Chinese goods could be either withheld from a country or dumped on it. Exports to China could be blocked. The world’s largest creditor could toy with an indebted government’s bond market, or call in its loans.
From time to time, it has turned this coercive firepower on countries that it views as transgressive. Countries including
Japan, Norway, Lithuania and
Australia have already been put through the vice.
Now, it is showing the world just how far it is prepared to go.
The new rare earth powers have been announced amid claims that Britain dropped a trial against two alleged Chinese spies because of its dependence on Beijing for cash.
The case against two Britons collapsed after the Government failed to brand China a national security threat explicitly. The spooks have also reportedly been kept away from a decision on whether Beijing can build a new super-embassy in
London.
In the US, Trump’s response has veered between pugnacious and placatory. After the rare earths decision, he vowed massive tariffs, only to back-pedal two days later. On Tuesday, he was back on the war path: China’s quiet boycott of US soybeans was “an economically hostile act” that would require “retribution”, he told his Truth Social followers.
Beijing has described its latest rare earths measure as retaliatory, not escalatory.
“China has said in as many words that it has modelled its own approach on what the US has been doing,” says Nigel Inkster, a former deputy
MI6 chief now at Enodo Economics.
[Nobody
spends money on weapons they do not intend to use. Coupled with their
nuclear bomb shelter programme, it should be obvious that China is preparing for
WW3. China in particular is taking advantage
of the apparent generosity of Europe and the US, who keep on importing
goods that are "Made In China." One can imagine Jinping's glee
at the stupidity of the West, where they are buying the goods to pay for
his warmongering ambitions. The solution is to invest in bullet-proof
air defenses, and naval autonomous drones. But the US and NATO
military seem to blind to the obvious foil, intent on developing and
manufacturing conventional weapons. NATO allies should take a leaf
out of Ukraine's battle tactics. Drones in large numbers and effective
air defences (early warning systems) are the only way to level the
playing field on the high seas. It seems wWe are now in a "Warm War" pre stage to WW3.]
CHINA'S USE OF ECONOMIC WEAPONRY
But Xi has spent his entire presidency building towards this moment. Economic weapons have always been part of his arsenal.
The most obvious is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a $1.3tn (£970bn) scheme of loans, grants and investments used to fund infrastructure projects in 150 countries worldwide.
The programme creates openings for Chinese investments and contracts for its companies. It locks economies into Chinese trade and freight corridors. It buys influence over governments.
The first half of this year was the BRI’s biggest yet: $66bn of construction contracts were awarded and $57bn of investments made, according to a report from Australia’s Griffith University and China’s Green Finance and Development Centre. There were record outlays on energy, metals and mining and technology.
The BRI has helped China become the world’s largest lender to developing countries. Its total now exceeds the combined lending of the
International Monetary
Fund, the World Bank and the Paris Club of 22 major creditor countries.
When the projects are debt-funded, Chinese lenders often demand key assets as collateral.
“If you’re in hock to China for billions and billions of US dollars, then you’ve got to be nice to China,” says Kynge. “I wouldn’t quite call it coercion. I call it leverage, but it could turn into coercion.”
The Stimson Centre has suggested that the BRI may have helped steer some developing countries away from recognising Taiwan diplomatically.
Although recipient countries benefit from the infrastructure, the BRI investment can go awry.
In Sri Lanka, a Chinese company took control of the Hambantota port in 2017 under a 99-year lease after the government in Colombo was unable to repay the debt.
In Ethiopia, a railway to the Port of Djibouti fell short of both the coast and Ethiopia’s industrial parks. The BRI had also saddled Ethiopia with debt, concentrated among Chinese creditors. According to a report published by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, “positive spillovers from investment and lending from China have been limited”.
The second weapon in Xi’s arsenal is the monopolies China has built up in supply chains for goods the world cannot do without. The country’s mines churn out 61pc of the world’s rare earths, and its refiners and manufacturers process 92pc of the world’s supply.
China also holds dominant positions in the manufacture of batteries,
solar panels and
wind
turbines, giving it the power to control prices, profitability and market access worldwide.
Many of the major producers are state-owned, state-controlled, or at the whim of state direction – meaning Beijing can use them as a lever of coercion.
“It’s not just China’s readiness to withhold access to things, it’s also the other side of the coin: China can flood international markets with highly subsidised products like electric vehicles and solar panels. For
Europe, this is a particular cause for concern,” Inkster says.
Beijing exercises this control behind the fig leaf of bureaucratic procedures. The rare earth “ban” in April was actually just a new licensing process. Similarly, import bans – such as those on Australian wine, barley and lobsters in 2020 – were framed as anti-dumping or sanitary measures.
“China disguises such actions as technical trade disputes, but the intent is political and the outcome is coercive,” said John Coyne, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Now, China is deploying this weapon even more blatantly. Recently, it has simply stopped buying American soybeans, sorghum and beef.
The boycott is a significant blow to American farmers. China bought $12.6bn of US soybeans last year but has not purchased any since May. Trump has noticed: on Tuesday, he threatened to retaliate by terminating
US imports of Chinese cooking oil.
Beijing is increasingly complementing this leverage with its third weapon: strategic investments, which reward friendly countries like Hungary and Spain, while freezing out the miscreants.
In the past two years, Spain welcomed a €1bn battery gigafactory investment, and two
EV ventures worth a combined €1.7bn. When the EU was readying tariffs on Chinese-made EVs last year, the pushback came from Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
Britain and the EU have stepped up their security screening of Chinese investments, and the country has been ejected from nuclear and steel projects in the UK.
But Labour has lately sounded more emollient. “China, because of its emerging economic status, isn’t just unignorable, it is also desirable to engage with,” Peter Kyle, the Business Secretary, said recently during a trip to Beijing.
Kynge wonders when, or whether, London and the European capitals will get serious about building resilience to China’s leverage. He reckons Beijing’s latest rare earth clampdown could be “a catalyst, finally, to goad the EU and the UK into action”.
“If we do actually do something, then maybe in several years, when we’ve built up some kind of a resilient supply chain for rare earths, people will look back at this moment and say China overplayed its hand,” he says.
Building up alternative supplies of rare earths will be a costly and lengthy task. In the meantime, Inkster has another suggestion: don’t be cowed. He counsels
Britain and its allies to stiffen their spines, starting with the espionage prosecution.
“I honestly doubt that prosecuting this case would have a significant impact on China’s readiness to trade or invest. And even if it did, I think it would be temporary and reversible,” he says.
“At a time when the Chinese economy is still going through a pretty rough patch, they’re unlikely to want to cut off their noses just to spite their face.”
But with the world’s second-largest economy flexing its ever-growing muscles, and Trump’s
America less squarely at Britain’s back, the former spook’s advice may go unheeded.
The battle for the future of the world has begun.
By Hans van Leeuwen
MEDIA
ARTICLES LEADING UP TO WWIII
BBC
News - 19 May 2023 - Japan's pacifism hangs in the balance as China &
North Korean threats loom
Big
Break - June
2024 - Final Draft panel of judges $80,000 dollars prizes for winning
scripts & screenplays
CNDUK
- 15 May 2024 - Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament
CNN
-
Daily
Express - 11 May 2024 - Putin crisis after NATO issues 'red lines' warning as West braces for WW3 with Russia
Daily
Express - 8 July 2022 - What
would happen in a NATO Vs BRICS war?
Daily
Mail -
Daily
Star - 11 December 2023 - Zendaya
is to play Cleopatra
in Denis
Villeneuve's epic with Sony
Pictures
ITV
-
Jerusalem
Post - 29
June 2022 - Israel state comptroller world not ready for cyber security
WWIII
Mirror
- 8
September 2025 - Immortality, organ transplants to live to 100, hand
presidencies over to sons
MSN
- 12
March 2025 - China builds equivalent of Royal Navy fleet in just 4 years
MSN
- 15
October 2025 - $Trillion dollar choke hold, belt and road, rare earth
minerals, national security risks
NBC
News -
New
York Times - 15
March 2022 - This is how World War Three begins
NTI
Nuclear Threat Initiative - 31
October 2023 The Cyber Nuclear Threat
Reuters
-
Sky
-
The
i - 16 May 2024 - We
are at war with Russia - Emerging new world order Puting & Xi
The
independent - 10
March 2017 - World War 3 is coming
The
Independent - 3 September 2023 - Russian
Cyber Attacks Relentless as threat of WW3 grows
The
Guardian -
The
Telegraph - 15 April 2024 - Wallace:
West must stand up to Iranian bullies
The
Telegraph - 21st August 2024 - US
prepares for joint Chinese, North Korean & Russian missile strike
The
Times -
The
Washington Post -
Vox
News - 17 March 2022 - Funding
withdrawn for anti-nuclear campaigns despite Ukraine
Wall
Street Journal -
BOOKS
INDEX
Michael
Mathiesen - Cyber
Wars United: We must win world war three - 17 July 2003
James Rosone & Miranda Watson -
Book 1: Prelude to World War III
James Rosone & Miranda Watson -
Book 2: Operation Red Dragon, the Unthinkable
James Rosone & Miranda Watson -
Book 3: Operation Red Dawn and the Siege of Europe
James Rosone & Miranda Watson -
Book 4: Cyber-Warfare and the New World Order
The devastating impact of
a potential nuclear war as perceived by society has galvanized the public to protest and march to confront this dire
subject, and make politicians aware of their concerns. These events are
typically captured in televised news reports and in the press.
Mostly, news coverage focuses on conflicts around the world, the
cumulative effect of which is to de-stabilize capitalist states to the
advantage of communist states, or states that wish to spread their
religious ideals using force, despite freedom of thought of conscience, as embodied in
the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, being a right that applies
equally and without discrimination to other religions. Where, the free democratic
world recognises the rights of other nations, for their citizens to
follow their faith without seeking to change their vocation or beliefs -
and are welcomed in peace.
But, the reciprocal acceptance of Christian and other related faiths in the West is
not always forthcoming - most especially from extremists and terrorists.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/china-has-the-world-in-a-1tn-choke-hold/ar-AA1OvPu8
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/china-has-the-world-in-a-1tn-choke-hold/ar-AA1OvPu8
Commander John
Storm just wants to be left alone to complete his DNA collection, and
explore the uncharted regions on planet
earth. But he always seems to be
in the wrong place at the wrong time.
CHAPTERS
| CHARACTERS
| MEDIA
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MOVIE REF |
SCREENPLAYS
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