China's Rule on Military Minerals

China has a written rule that says: if a mineral is going to a military user, or being used for military purposes, it does not leave the country. Full stop. That rule is not new, it is not a threat, and it was not part of the recent trade deal. It has been sitting in force since December 2024, and it still applies today. (Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, Notice 2024 No. 46, 3 December 2024, translated by CSET Georgetown)

Everything else China does — the mineral-specific bans, the licence system, the loosening and tightening depending on the trade talks — sits underneath that one fixed rule.

What Announcement No. 46 actually says:

Point one:

"The export of dual-use items to U.S. military users or for military uses is prohibited."

Point two:

"In principle, the export of the relevant dual-use items gallium, germanium, antimony, and superhard materials to the United States is not permitted; stricter end-user and end-use checks will be implemented on exports of dual-use graphite items to the United States."

(Ministry of Commerce, Notice 2024 No. 46, translated in full by CSET Georgetown, December 2024)

The document then adds a clause that matters: anyone, anywhere, of any nationality, who takes Chinese-made dual-use goods and passes them on to a US military user, breaks Chinese law and can be investigated. That clause reaches outside China's borders. It follows the material, not just the transaction. (CSET translation, ibid.)

What is a "dual-use item"? It means something that can be used for ordinary civilian purposes — batteries, phones, wind turbines, electric cars — or for weapons and military hardware. The same lump of gallium can go into a smartphone screen or a radar system. That is what makes it "dual-use." China's whole export control law is built around this one category. (Baker McKenzie, China Published Implementing Regulations under the Export Control Law, November 2024)

Announcement No. 46 did not appear from nowhere. It sits on top of a law: the Export Control Law of the People's Republic of China (2020), and a set of implementing regulations that came into force on 1 December 2024 — one day before Announcement No. 46 was issued. (Baker McKenzie, ibid.; CMS Law, China's New Dual-Use Items Export Control Regulations, November 2024)

That law contains what lawyers call a "catch-all" provision. This is the important bit for understanding how far China's reach extends. The catch-all rule says: even if a mineral or item is not on any official control list, China can still block its export if it believes the item will be used to threaten China's national security or interests — and this is written broadly enough to include foreign military activity anywhere in the world that China judges threatens its sovereignty. (Baker McKenzie, ibid.; Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Understanding China's Export Control Law, April 2026)

In plain terms: China does not need to name a mineral on a list to stop it leaving the country. If officials believe the end use is military and against Chinese interests, they can block it under this general clause, whatever the material actually is.

The regulations also created an ongoing reporting duty. If a Chinese exporter becomes aware that the end use of something they already shipped has changed — say, a civilian buyer turns out to be supplying a military programme — they must report it to the Ministry of Commerce. There is no time limit on this obligation. It can apply to shipments made in the past. (Baker McKenzie, ibid.)

There is a working bureaucratic system behind it, and it has three main mechanisms.

The licence system. Since new rules brought in through 2025, any export of the controlled rare earth elements — samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, yttrium and others added later — requires an export licence from the Ministry of Commerce. There are two types: an Individual Licence, covering one shipment to one named buyer, or a General Licence, for exporters with a track record of compliance, covering multiple shipments over time. Every application has to name the end user and describe exactly what the material will be used for. Processing can take up to 45 working days. (Taylor Wessing, Key Changes in China's Export Control Landscape for Rare Earths, April 2026)

The automatic rejection rule. China Briefing, a Beijing-based advisory firm, reported in November 2025: "MOFCOM will generally not approve applications for an export license for items destined for overseas military end-users, effectively banning" those exports outright. (China Briefing, China's Rare Earth Export Controls — Impact on Businesses, November 2025) CSIS confirmed the same mechanism in September 2025: "any requests to use rare earths for military purposes will be automatically rejected." (Center for Strategic and International Studies, China's New Rare Earth and Magnet Restrictions Threaten US Defense Supply Chains, September 2025)

There is no appeal process described in the public material. If the stated end user is a military body, the application does not get approved. It is a filter built into the licensing process itself, not a case-by-case political decision each time.

Following the material, not just the transaction — the 0.1% rule. In its most aggressive move, announced in Ministry of Commerce Announcement No. 61 (2025), China said it would require its own government approval before any foreign company, anywhere in the world, could export a magnet or component if that item contains even trace amounts — as little as 0.1% by weight — of Chinese-origin rare earth material, or was made using Chinese mining, refining or processing technology. (CSIS, ibid.)

This borrows a legal tool the United States invented for its own semiconductor restrictions — the Foreign Direct Product Rule. CSIS's explanation: "if U.S. technology appears anywhere in the supply chain, Washington can assert jurisdiction." China has now built its own version of the same tool, in reverse. Effective 1 December 2025, any company anywhere with a link to a foreign military, including the US military, will "largely be denied export licences" for these items. (CSIS, ibid.)

Controlling the people, not just the goods. The same announcement bars Chinese nationals from taking part in rare earth mining, processing or magnet-manufacturing projects anywhere in the world without explicit permission from Chinese authorities first. This builds on an earlier move — a December 2023 ban on exporting the actual technology used to process rare earths — meaning China is not just controlling the raw material, it is controlling the knowledge of how to produce it. (CSIS, ibid.)

At the end of October 2025, Trump and Xi met in South Korea and negotiated a partial rollback. From November 2025 until 27 November 2026, China agreed to suspend the broader October 2025 package: controls on rare earth processing equipment, several medium and heavy rare earths, related technology transfers, and the "0.1% Chinese content" rule for foreign-made goods. Both countries agreed to suspend retaliatory tariffs from the same period. (Z2Data, How the US-China Trade Deal Impacts Your Critical Mineral Sourcing, November 2025; Pillsbury Law, China Suspends Export Controls on Certain Critical Minerals-Related Items, November 2025)

This is the part that gets misunderstood. The truce is a one-year pause on some of the newer, broader controls. It is not a repeal of the underlying law, and it explicitly did not touch the military end-use prohibition from Announcement No. 46. Pillsbury Law's briefing is specific about this: Article 1 of the December 2024 Announcement — the ban on exports to US military users or for military end uses — was "not part of the items China suspended" in the trade truce. (Pillsbury Law, ibid.)

Several individual mineral controls also remained untouched by the truce: tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum and indium (under a separate 2025 Announcement No. 10), plus the specific licensing requirement for the seven medium/heavy rare earths named in Announcement No. 18. (Pillsbury Law, ibid.)

So: the trade deal bought a year of easier trading conditions for some rare earths destined for ordinary civilian and industrial buyers. It changed nothing about the standing rule against military end use, and it left several specific minerals under full restriction regardless.

Like a pharmacist watching a methadone script. The American war machine is being monitored to stop it shooting up our shared reserves and sanity.