JD.com, Ant Group Push for Yuan-Based Stablecoins to Counter Dollar Rule: Reuters
They propose launching stablecoins in Hong Kong backed by the offshore yuan, aiming to boost the Chinese currency's global role.
Both firms already plan to issue Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoins once local legislation begins August 1.
However, JD.com is advocating for offshore yuan stablecoins as a strategic move to support yuan internationalization. The push reflects China's broader ambitions to challenge U.S. dominance in digital finance and expand the reach of its currency globally.
China has a long-standing ban on cryptocurrency transactions, which extends to most private stablecoins. This ban, particularly intensified in 2021, was motivated by concerns over financial crime, capital flight, and potential threats to financial stability.
As a counter, China poured resources into developing and piloting its own digital yuan (e-CNY). This central bank digital currency (CBDC) is seen as a way to modernize its payment system and exert greater control over its financial landscape.
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Europe Is Playing Catch-Up in the Race for Critical Minerals
A once-niche corner of the commodities market has become a new frontier in global power politics. To make everything from electric vehicles and wind turbines to next-generation weapons systems, modern economies now depend on a growing roster of buried ingredients: cobalt, lithium, rare earths and other so-called critical minerals. Governments are responding in kind. In April, the U.S. signed a landmark deal with Ukraine, granting U.S. firms access to the country's mineral reserves in exchange for defense and reconstruction support. It was a transactional agreement and a revealing one: A war-forged security partnership now hinges on minerals as bargaining chips, in a world where raw materials increasingly double as strategic currency. Elsewhere, Gulf states are making inroads across Africa, while China—already the commanding force in global mineral supply chains—continues to tighten its grip. Now the European Union is sprinting to catch up. Over the past two years, Brussels has signed a flurry of raw materials partnerships, including with Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Namibia. Robert Besseling, CEO and founder of Pangea-Risk, notes that the EU 'has its own definition of what makes some minerals critical, and that's different from how China, the U.S. and smaller players like Russia see what is critical for their domestic economies.' As a major steel producer, for instance, the EU's list of critical minerals includes coking coal, along with materials like silicon, helium, boron and gallium, which aren't priorities for most other powers. To get more in-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs from WPR, sign up for our free Daily Review newsletter. But where demand for minerals overlap, the competition is fierce. And whether it's aluminum and bauxite in Guinea, graphite in Mozambique, lithium in Zimbabwe, nickel in South Africa, and copper and cobalt in the DRC and Zambia, Besseling says, the central arena of that competition is in Africa. Meanwhile, in the name of 'de-risking,' the EU also wants to wean itself off foreign dependence by building what it calls more resilient supply chains, which is shorthand for reducing reliance on a single supplier, more local or allied-country processing and greater control over each stage of production. That won't be easy, however. Take lithium and rare earths, for instance: The EU imports nearly all of its supplies of both—and in the case of rare earths, half come directly from China, which controls 90 percent of global processing. 'China is way ahead in terms of investment, but also in terms of actual ownership and operations of mines,' says Besseling. That reach, he adds, spans the entire production process. When it comes to electric vehicles, or EVs, for example, Chinese companies dominate the supply chain for the minerals that go into their batteries on the mining side. But they also dominate 'the processing side and the manufacturing of EVs,' he adds. 'The whole value chain is essentially dominated by China.' It wasn't always this lopsided. During the 2003-2011 commodity supercycle, when metal prices surged, Western mining giants such as BHP, Rio Tinto and Glencore aggressively expanded into Africa and Latin America, pouring billions into what are known as frontier projects in the sector due to their greater risk. But as copper and cobalt prices fell, the calculus for risky overseas ventures shifted. Investors demanded caution, and companies began retreating. At the same time, the wealthy member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development doubled down on the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement, a long-standing pact discouraging the use of subsidies to boost national champions. The idea was to hedge against a race to the bottom in state-backed financing, meaning no cheap loans to help mining firms compete abroad. The problem is that Chinese lenders have opted for a different approach that isn't based on the West's liberal market-based model, says Brooke Escobar, who directs a team at AidData specializing in financial tracking. In a report released in January, Escobar and her co-authors detailed how, over the past two decades, China has built a financing model that's fast, scalable and tough for Western countries to match. A Chinese state-owned enterprise might enter a country to co-develop a copper or cobalt mine, for instance, backed by a loan from one of Beijing's policy banks or state-owned commercial lenders. 'But it's concessional lending,' Escobar points out, 'so it's cheaper than what those companies could get on the market otherwise.' Moreover, that financing often covers the costs of developing not just the mine itself, but also roads, power plants and export terminals. And it usually comes in stages, with several loans supporting the project through development and operation. Meanwhile, in addition to securing equity in the mine, the Chinese firm signs a long-term offtake agreement—a contract to buy a set share of the mine's output—typically with a buyer in mainland China. This combination of ownership abroad and guaranteed supply for domestic processors is central to China's strategy. And it has paid off. Between 2000 and 2021, China committed nearly $57 billion in state-backed financing for these mineral projects across 19 low- and middle-income countries, according to AidData's report. As a result, it now holds sway over every stage of the supply chain for many of the critical minerals that will fuel the green energy transition. Chinese companies control 25 percent of global lithium mining capacity and 80 percent of cobalt production in the DRC, which supplies over half the world's cobalt. China also handles around 90 percent of global rare earths processing, over two-thirds of cobalt and lithium refining, and more than half of the global material exports that go into batteries. In short, China has developed a playbook that sidesteps market hesitations, tolerates political risk and prioritizes long-term strategic gains. And the West has struggled to adapt. 'It's not necessarily that the Chinese companies have this exclusive edge,' says Tiffany Wognaih, an Africa-focused political risk and strategy adviser at the J.S. Held global consulting firm. 'Rather, they have been the players that have shown a willingness to enter the market.' They've also shown greater staying power compared to Western companies that did enter frontier markets. Wognaih points to the U.S. mining giant Freeport-McMoRan, which began investing heavily in the mid-2000s in two major copper and cobalt sites in Congo: the Tenke Fungurume mine and the Kisanfu exploration project. But in 2016, under financial strain, 'they put the asset up for sale,' Wognaih says. 'And China took it.' Escobar also cites Freeport-McMoRan's exit from Congo, but as a case of Western governments failing to act. Both U.S. officials and representatives of the company appealed for help from Washington to retain control of the project. 'But no one stepped in,' she says, in part due to a lack of political will. But she adds that, having built their finance systems around strict rules on market neutrality, OECD countries 'don't have the mechanism to say, 'We're going to extend you this cheap finance that will provide you the liquidity that you need to make it through.'' Without that state backing, Western financiers are left to rely on risk-reward calculations, and that limits the options. 'Tier-one projects will get financed,' Andor Lips, a financing and raw materials expert at the Dutch Geological Survey, says, referring to quality projects that are ready to come to market. But there are only a handful of them, and lower-tier projects are riskier, starting with the risk of exploring a concession and not finding exploitable reserves. 'There are also market risks, price, environment, delays,' he adds. 'It's all in the mix.' That's bad news for the EU. For now, the mineral partnerships it has signed are largely symbolic: nonbinding and dependent on private investment. But as Lips—who has contributed to work by the European Commission as an external expert—notes, 'the EU is not a country, so the legal push to encourage investments is limited: You cannot provide tax incentives, you cannot provide additional capital, where normally a country can do that.' There are EU financial tools at private firms' disposal, including the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and initiatives like the Global Gateway. But navigating them is complex. Figuring out which funds can be used where, and how overlapping mandates interact, is 'a bit of an intellectual exercise,' Lips says, adding that even functionaries within the European Commission are often operating based on fragmented information. Worse, the EU is up against the clock, as the race for critical minerals is getting more crowded. Gulf countries are deploying cash and state backing to strike minerals deals across Africa, with Turkey, India and others following suit. Many are copying China's playbook: bundled deals, state-backed financing and minimal red tape. The U.S., under President Donald Trump, has loosened enforcement of anti-corruption rules to give companies more leeway in risky environments and is partnering with Gulf allies to share investment risk. The EU, by contrast, remains bound by high environmental, social and governance, or ESG, standards, as well as a fractured bureaucracy and few tools to compete. Indeed, Europe's lag is partly structural: Market-first models simply aren't built to compete with the speed and coordination of state-led rivals like China. But it's difficult to reflect on the past few decades without also recognizing a stunning lapse in political foresight. As China doubled down on access to critical minerals, Western countries pulled back, even as it was already clear these minerals would come to hold tremendous geopolitical weight. Now, catching up may mean setting aside market orthodoxy in favor of security priorities. The urgency is real: After Beijing imposed new export controls on rare earths this spring, automakers in Europe and the U.S. warned they were just weeks away from halting production lines. But even if Europe secures more raw materials, full independence from China remains out of reach. 'If you get access to processed minerals you still need to create demand for those processed minerals in the EU,' says Poorva Karkare, senior policy analyst at the European Centre for Development Policy Management. 'In order to do that, you need to start producing more batteries, more EVs, more whatever.' And given its dominance across the supply chains for these products, that will mean working with China. Rather than framing the challenge as a zero-sum game, Karkare suggests the EU should bring China into its partnership model. European firms may currently play a small role in extraction, but they excel in surveying and engineering. Even their ESG standards could work to their advantage, as Chinese firms are already turning to European counterparts to meet rising standards demanded by investors, global regulators, African governments and consumers, she notes. If European firms embed themselves deeper into project lifecycles, they could claim more of the value chain and start to build mutual dependence with their Chinese partners. Karkare concedes that EU leaders might balk at a strategy that involves China. 'But China is going to be involved every step of the way, and there's almost no circumventing that,' she says. The conversation in Brussels and Washington these days has shifted to completely decoupling from China. But as Karkare notes, when it comes to critical minerals, that's no longer feasible. Instead, Europe should try to think of ways to reduce that dependence, including by making it mutual. Carl-Johan Karlsson is a freelance journalist covering politics in the U.S. and Europe. You can find him on LinkedIn. The post Europe Is Playing Catch-Up in the Race for Critical Minerals appeared first on World Politics Review.
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
China's Rare Earth Origin Story, Explained
Rare earth metals were an afterthought for most world leaders until China temporarily suspended most exports of them a couple of months ago. But for almost half a century, they have received attention from the very top of the Chinese government. During his 27-year rule in China, Mao Zedong focused often on increasing how much iron and steel China produced, but seldom on its quality. The result was high production of weak iron and steel that could not meet the needs of the industry. In the late 1940s, metallurgists in Britain and the United States had developed a fairly low-tech way to improve the quality of ductile iron, which is widely used for pipelines, car parts and other applications. The secret? Add a dash of the rare earth cerium to the metal while it is still molten. It was one of the early industrial uses of rare earths. And unlike most kinds of rare earths, cerium was fairly easy to chemically separate from ore. When Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's paramount leader in 1978, he moved quickly to fix the country's iron and steel industry. Mr. Deng named a top technocrat, Fang Yi, as a vice premier and also as the director of the powerful State Science and Technology Commission. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump's Brazen New Lie Leads To Instant Fact-Check On Social Media
President Donald Trump on Friday made a wild new claim about wind power as he renewed his attacks on renewable energy. Trump complained that many of the components used in wind turbines are made in China, then suggested that China itself doesn't actually use wind turbines. 'I have never seen a wind farm in China,' Trump declared. 'Why is that? Somebody check that out.' In reality, China is far and away the world's leading producer of wind energy, with more than triple the current U.S. wind capacity. Trump, however, has long had issues with renewable energy ― especially wind, which he has called 'bullshit' and 'a hoax,' a grudge he has held since a dispute over an offshore wind farm near one of his resorts. Now, Trump might finally get his way as his 'big beautiful bill' will wipe out tax credits for wind and solar power, potentially decimating the industry. The Rhodium Group, a research firm, estimates the bill will put a stop to between 57% and 72% of new solar and wind projects. North America's Building Trades Unions slammed the move as 'the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country' as those projects are cancelled. 'Critical infrastructure projects essential to that future are being sacrificed at the altar of ideology,' the organization said in a statement. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman said China is 'laughing' at the United States as a result, writing: 'The Chinese simply can't believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable. They have passed a giant bill that, among other craziness, deliberately undermines America's ability to generate electricity through renewables — solar, battery and wind power in particular.' Since Trump said 'somebody check that out' when railing against wind power, many people did exactly that ― and gave the president a fact-check: Trump has never seen a wind farm in China because he's an incurious narcissist who ignores all information that contradicts his biases. The Gansu wind farm is the largest onshore wind farm in the world, with 7000 turbines. China is the global leader in installed wind capacity. — James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) July 4, 2025 China leads the world in permitting & building new coal plants, but they have over 7000 wind turbines & are one of the leaders in solar power. Look, this guy loves coal & hates anything green, I get it. But the incessant lying, that's easily fact checked, is off the charts! — Scott Jones (BS, MAT, CSCS) (@CoachJones007) July 4, 2025 A wind farm, in China. — Andrew Stokols (@astoks) July 4, 2025 There are tons of wind farms in China. Just another pointless easy to debunk lie that the cult will eat up like fast food. — Mike Therien (@miketherien) July 5, 2025 China is the number one country for wind energy... but sure — Auntie Smartassy (@AuntSassyAss) July 4, 2025 — Mark Farina (@djmarkfarina) July 4, 2025 China is a global leader in wind energy. Here's a pic. — Lois Romano (@loisromano) July 5, 2025 Fact Check: China is literally the global leader in wind energy. The largest wind farms located in regions like Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. — Ford News (@FordJohnathan5) July 4, 2025 World's largest wind farm is in China... — Jo Mannies (@jmannies) July 5, 2025 Wind power generates 10% of electricity in China, about the same percentage as wind power in should be able to know this. — Steven Pifer (@steven_pifer) July 5, 2025 'As of April 2025, 138 wind farms were operating in China. China has the largest number of offshore wind farms, followed by the United Kingdom, Vietnam, and Germany' — Diana Pegoraro (@DianaPegoraro) July 5, 2025 Donald Trump knows a lot about breaking wind. — Machine Pun Kelly 🇺🇦 (@KellyScaletta) July 5, 2025
