China’s warning to Japan that it could choke off supplies of rare earths, its favorite weapon in trade conflicts, targets a persistent vulnerability among Japanese manufacturers after more than a decade of Tokyo trying to reduce reliance on its rival.
Beijing is mulling stricter scrutiny of the licenses to ship the minerals to Japan, the state-owned China DailyBloomberg Terminal reported on Tuesday evening, citing an unidentified person, as the row worsens between the two countries over remarks the Japanese Prime Minister made last year on Taiwan. The affected materials would be the same seven elements that China restricted in April in response to the trade war launched by the US.