If China had initiated the ban it would have been viewed as an unjustified violation of free trade, which is against the image China has cultivated for itself. Trump already showed in his first term that he cannot resist starting trade wars, and China understands this too. All they had to do was let the US make the mistake everyone knew they were bound to make and give China the justification for retaliating.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Why not both?

[–] Flutterpuff@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

My bad on the wording.

To clarify: was China’s rare earth ban a pre-planned contingency for any future Western aggression. or a specific tactic designed only for Trump’s tariffs.

I'm just curious because a user on the bear site said, 'the CPC was pressured against the wall and forced to use the rare earth ban for leverage.'

[–] Jonathan12345@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 4 weeks ago

the CPC was pressured against the wall and forced to use the rare earth ban for leverage.

That's a... pretty interesting claim, since at this stage China and the US are basically on equal footing, and we've already seen that China has done ample preparing for a potential trade war, with them basically being unaffected. If any side is the desperate one, it's the US.