China dominates the world’s supply of rare minerals. It has banned their export for use by foreign militaries. Now, it’s worried Australia may return the favour.
China’s chokehold has dramatically curtailed the global flow of seven minerals crucial for the construction of electric vehicles, wind turbines, combat aircraft and advanced weapons systems.
But there is one critical mineral it doesn’t have. And Australia does.
The ABC’s Four Corners program highlights a threat assessment from China’s National University of Defence Technology.
The May study from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) run campus identifies steady, reliable flows of the rare mineral zirconium as a critical chokepoint.
“As a major importer and consumer of zirconium … China is facing severe challenges to resource security,” the ABC quotes the report as saying.
“[This] has become a critical issue for ensuring national security and advancing military technological progress.”
Screen captures from a Chinese state-controlled media video depicting hypersonic warheads raining down on a US aircraft carrier.
It’s not the first time the PLA has issued this warning.
A research paper published in the Chinese journal Geological Review in November last year warned that Zircon from Australia could become “fiercely contested”.
“Global demand for zirconium resources is continuously growing due to their enormous potential in military applications,” argued National University of Defence Technology senior engineer Kong Fanjin.
“Amid the intensifying competition for global strategic resources, how to rationally allocate zirconium ore resources has become a key issue for safeguarding national security and promoting military technological progress.”
Beijing’s weaponisation of the critical minerals supply has ignited a global debate.
Early last month, it imposed new restrictions on rare earth exports. But this came with a twist.
“Instead of simply controlling the export of rare earths from China—the move it made in April—Beijing announced that it will require a license for any cross-border sale worldwide,” wrote Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analyst Alasdair Phillips-Robins.
“China’s new rules also specify that buyers tied to foreign militaries will have their applications denied, and companies producing advanced semiconductors will get extra scrutiny.”
That threat appears to have abated, with China’s Chairman Xi Jinping promising US President Donald Trump late last week that he would release this chokehold in return for a suspension of all US tariffs, except for the “minimum” 10 per cent.
But Beijing has unashamedly flexed its critical minerals muscle.
Even as it used them to build the world’s largest navy, a powerful new air force, and a modernised—and highly mobile—army.
This raises another time-honoured quandary: Should Australia be supplying raw materials to China that it may soon return on the tip of a hypersonic missile, or in the hulls of an invasion fleet?
An air-launched version of the hypersonic DF-21 missile is shown carried by a Chinese H-6 bomber. The warhead and scramjet engines of hypersonic missiles are reliant on the mineral zircon to survive the temperatures generated by flying at more than five times the speed of sound. Picture: PLA
China is the biggest source of security anxiety
“China’s hypersonic weapons are entering a period of explosive growth,” the state-controlled South China Morning Post (SCMP) states.
It’s a claim backed up by Beijing’s frequent shows of force.
Hypersonic missiles have begun featuring prominently at commercial airshows. They also took pride of place among the fanfare presented to Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un at September’s Victory Day military parade in Beijing.
To be effective, hypersonic missiles and aircraft need zircon.
It can withstand sustained temperatures of over 2500C. It is also highly resistant to abrasion.
“Especially materials like zirconium diboride, thanks to their stability in extreme high-temperature environments, are widely used in the thermal protection systems of hypersonic aircraft and spacecraft,” geologist Kong explains.
It is a coating for missile nosecones and key scramjet engine components, as well as an alloy component for heat-shield materials and structural airframes.
China holds just 0.7 per cent of the world’s known zircon reserves. Australia has the world’s largest at 67 per cent. South Africa comes second, at 10.5 per cent.
No effective alternatives are known.
“As a major importer and consumer of zirconium resources, China is facing severe challenges to its resource security,” the PLA geologist warns.
“However, China is also Australia’s largest trading partner, and the huge profits from selling ores to China play a crucial role in maintaining Australia’s high standard of living.”
It’s an issue that has confronted Canberra before.
History may not repeat. But it does rhyme.
China desperately needs zirconium to build up its hypersonic missile arsenal. Picture: Greg Baker / AFP
But Australian raw materials continued to flow to these countries.
In May 1938, the Joseph Lyons Government bowed to public pressure. It imposed an embargo on WA iron ore exports to Japan. But it didn’t restrict the pig iron and scrap metal trade.
In response, Australian wharf workers refused to load part of a 300,000-ton Port Kembla pig iron shipment to Japan’s naval construction facility at Kure. Melbourne waterfront workers also refused to load scrap iron bound for Germany.
Then Attorney General Robert Menzies reacted with indignation, accusing the union of dictating foreign policy. This earned him the nickname of “Pig Iron Bob”.
Like Menzies before him, Australia’s current Defence Minister, Richard Marles, does not believe export controls are necessary.
“There are other sources of zirconium from around the world, such that Australia withdrawing from the zirconium market would not mean the military use of zirconium would also stop,” he told Four Corners.
“China is our largest trading partner on the one hand, and our biggest source of security anxiety on the other. And that’s just the way the world is.”
The heat is on
Australia exported niobium, tantalum, vanadium and zirconium ores worth $US34 million to China last year, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database.
This pales in significance compared to iron ore. This was worth $US80 billion last year.
China is the world’s largest steel producer. Australia sends about 85 per cent of its iron ore exports to China. China receives 61 per cent of its iron ore imports from Australia.
And while Australia’s ore is said to be used in structural steel for the construction industry, there is virtually no accounting for where it goes. And even if there was, it would still free up steel from other sources to be redirected towards China’s military.
And that’s turning steel into warships, tanks, aircraft, and invasion barges at an alarming rate.
“Chinese shipbuilding capacity is something like 200 times overall that of the United States,” warns London-based Institute for Strategic Studies analyst Nick Childs.
In practical terms, that means the Chinese Communist Party now controls the world’s largest navy, with 234 warships. The US has 219. It’s currently building six new warships for every 1.5 completed for the US Navy.
“The prospect of Chinese military action against Australia remains remote,” a Lowy Institute report argues.
“But China has the military and industrial potential to field a long-range power projection capacity that would dwarf anything Japan threatened Australia with during the Second World War.”
And hypersonic missiles are a central plank in Beijing’s war plans.
They’re the single greatest threat to the United States Navy’s imposing aircraft carrier battlegroups. But they also pose a severe menace to military airfields as far away as NSW’s RAAF Base Williamtown.
Military analysts fear a surprise attack on US and allied airbases across Asia and the Pacific would be the opening move in any future conflict. The Lowy Institute’s 2021 report assessed that about 60 conventionally-armed hypersonic DF-21 missiles would have to hit each airfield to ensure the destruction of all aircraft on the ground.
A 2024 Pentagon report states China already possesses well over 1000 such missiles.
“This is not to generate anxieties that thousands of missiles may begin raining down across the eastern seaboard at a moment’s notice,” argues Lowy Institute security analyst David Vallance.
“Understanding the facts about China’s military buildup can only create a more robust conversation in Australia about how best to respond.”
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