Communist China Is ‘Using Climate to Subvert the United States:’ Analyst

Workers at a factory for Xinwangda Electric Vehicle Battery Co., which makes lithium batteries for electric cars and other uses, in Nanjing in China's eastern Jiangsu Province, on March 12, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

The Chinese communist regime has laid out the strategy to take over the United States as the world’s dominant power by 2049. Meanwhile, the United States is reducing its national security by voluntarily making itself more dependent on the “green energy” that China dominates, analysts say.

“China is using climate to subvert the United States,” Steve Malloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, said in a recent interview on Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

“China has gotten the United States and Western Europe, and really all the developed countries, hooked on green technology,” Mr. Malloy said. At the heart of this alternative energy are technologies including wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles, which are reliant on certain critical raw materials, such as graphite and rare earth elements. For many of these materials, China—the United States’ top adversary—is the world’s major supplier and processor.

“I think their strategy is to get the Western world dependent on China for technology,” Mr. Malloy said. “It’s a fighting without fighting.”

Chinese Monopoly

Mr. Malloy cited an example of rare earths, a group of 17 elements that China has a near global monopoly on.

“And all these rare earths go into wind technology and solar technology, EVs, as well as our cell phones and computers,” Mr. Malloy said. “The whole world really depends on China for this.”

Minerals that fall under this label actually aren’t that rare. In fact, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) described rare earths as “relatively abundant.”

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“It’s just that they’re present in [the] soil at very low concentrations. So you have to strip mine do this,” Mr. Malloy explained.

A reason that the West stopped mining rare earths, according to Mr. Malloy, is the environmental pressure, as such practices are notoriously polluting. “But you can strip mine in China. They have no environmental regulations,” he said. “So China has volunteered to do this.”

Now, China accounts for 70 percent of global rare earth mined production, according to data compiled by the USGS. According to a 2019 study by consultancy firm Adamas Intelligence, China at the time accounted for 85 percent of the global capability to transform these mined minerals into usable forms for manufacturers.

The United States imports most of its rare earths from China, though that sole reliance has eased in recent years. From 2018 to 2021, China was responsible for 74 percent of rare earths imported to the United States, down from 80 percent between 2014 and 2017, the USGS data shows.

The Chinese regime has floated the idea of cutting off supplies of these materials that are crucial to the U.S. economy. In 2019, amid the peak of the U.S.–China trade war, China’s powerful state planning agency threatened to limit the sale of rare earths to the United States, after President Donald Trump blacklisted Huawei, a Chinese telecom giant with close ties to the regime’s military.

That was not the first time the regime used its monopoly over critical metals to gain leverage. In 2010, the Chinese regime temporarily blocked the export of rare earths to Japan as tensions between the two Asian powers escalated over disputed islands following the arrest of a Chinese captain.

Growing US Dependence

Mr. Malloy expressed concerns over the Biden administration’s push to transition the nation toward energy sources that China dominates.

President Joe Biden has unveiled federal rules aimed at ending the purchase of gas-powered vehicles by 2035. California is banning light-duty gas-powered cars, while other states, like Virginia and New Jersey, are moving in that direction.

“It’s extremely frustrating to see our politicians with these wind mandates, and solar mandates, and EV mandates,” Mr. Malloy said. “Where are the EVs going to come from? How are we going to make them if we don’t have a good relationship with China?”

The risk of relying on a communist regime for those key elements was in focus once again when Beijing announced export controls on graphite, which is essential for powering electronic vehicles.

China controls over 65 percent of the world’s supply of graphite. The restriction will ban Chinese exporters from shipping natural and artificial graphite and their products from Dec. 1, unless companies obtain licenses. The regime’s order came just three days after Washington unveiled new curbs on semiconductor exports to Beijing. China’s ministry of commerce said its order was to “safeguard national security and interests,” but U.S. lawmakers called the restriction the latest evidence of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) weaponization of trade over supply chain chokepoints.

“China is the sole producer of the refined graphite that goes into every EV battery,” Mr. Malloy noted. “So if China, right now, were to stop exporting refined graphite, there would be no EV batteries made.”

While some concerned companies and governments in the West have sought to get into the graphite market, Mr. Malloy suggested it takes years to build up an industry in which China already has a decades-long lead.

The way the CCP approaches the world is “completely different” from that of the Westerners, Mr. Malloy said, contending that not so many on Capital Hill appear to understand the regime’s strategy, especially in the green technology sector.

“China’s avowed goal is to be the lone global superpower by 2049,” while the United States is accelerating the nation’s transition to green energy technology and aiming to achieve “carbon neutrality” by 2050, Mr. Malloy said. “We’re actually kind of working in the same direction” as the CCP.

“We have this geopolitical rival out there, if not a mortal enemy, called China,” Mr. Malloy said. “We are making ourselves more economically dependent on them.”

“China is going to own us very soon, if they don’t already. And we’re going to be helpless.”