China's Minerals Stranglehold: A Growing Threat to European Defense Ambitions
As Europe accelerates its rearmament drive in response to shifting global security dynamics, a critical vulnerability is emerging from an unexpected direction — the supply of raw materials. China's dominant control over the world's most strategically vital minerals is casting a long shadow over the European Union's defense ambitions, raising urgent questions about the bloc's ability to build and sustain a credible military capability without first solving its minerals dependency problem.
From fighter jets and radar systems to missiles and armored vehicles, virtually every piece of modern military hardware relies on a cocktail of critical raw materials — many of which are processed, refined, or outright produced in China. As Brussels pushes member states to dramatically increase defense spending and domestic weapons production, the minerals bottleneck is threatening to become one of the most significant constraints on European rearmament in the years ahead.
Why Critical Minerals Are the Backbone of Modern Defense
The term "critical minerals" encompasses a wide range of materials that are essential to high-tech industries, including defense. These include rare earth elements such as neodymium, dysprosium, and praseodymium, as well as other strategic materials like cobalt, lithium, gallium, germanium, and tungsten. Each plays a specific and often irreplaceable role in defense applications.
- Neodymium and dysprosium are essential for the powerful permanent magnets used in guided missiles, drones, and electric motors for military vehicles.
- Gallium and germanium are critical for semiconductors used in radar, infrared sensors, and electronic warfare systems.
- Cobalt is vital for high-performance jet engine alloys and advanced battery systems used in next-generation military equipment.
- Tungsten is used for armor-piercing ammunition and missile components due to its extreme density and heat resistance.
China controls the processing of approximately 60% of the world's rare earth elements and holds dominant positions across multiple other critical mineral supply chains. In some categories — gallium and germanium being prime examples — China accounts for over 80% of global refined output. This level of concentration gives Beijing extraordinary leverage over any nation that relies on these materials for its industrial or military base.
Beijing's Willingness to Use Minerals as a Geopolitical Weapon
What was once treated as a theoretical risk has become an increasingly real and demonstrated threat. In recent years, China has shown a clear willingness to weaponize its minerals dominance as part of its broader geopolitical toolkit. Export restrictions on gallium and germanium, introduced in 2023, sent shockwaves through the global semiconductor and defense industry. Further controls on graphite, a material critical for battery technology, followed shortly after.
These measures were widely interpreted as retaliatory signals in the context of escalating technology and trade tensions with the West. For European defense planners, the message was unmistakable: supply chains that run through China are supply chains that can be switched off.
The EU has not been blind to this danger. The European Critical Raw Materials Act, which came into force in 2024, set ambitious targets for domestic extraction, processing, and recycling of strategic minerals, as well as requirements to diversify import sources so that no single third country accounts for more than 65% of any critical raw material the EU consumes. However, the gap between policy ambition and industrial reality remains wide.
The EU Rearmament Drive and Its Minerals Dependency
Europe's post-Ukraine security awakening has translated into a historic surge in defense spending commitments. NATO members across the continent have pledged to meet or exceed the alliance's 2% of GDP defense spending target, and the EU itself has launched initiatives to support joint procurement and industrial capacity. The ReArm Europe plan and associated instruments represent a genuine political shift toward treating defense as a shared European priority.
Yet scaling up weapons production is not simply a matter of funding. Ammunition factories, drone manufacturers, and armored vehicle producers all require reliable access to the same critical minerals that China largely controls. European defense companies have begun flagging supply chain risk as a material concern, and some procurement timelines are already being affected by uncertainty over raw material availability.
Where Is Europe Looking for Alternative Sources?
Recognizing the urgency, the EU has been actively cultivating strategic partnerships to diversify its minerals supply base. Several priority corridors have emerged.
- Africa holds some of the world's richest deposits of cobalt, manganese, and rare earths. The EU's Global Gateway initiative has earmarked billions for infrastructure and mining partnerships across the continent, aiming to position Europe as a preferred partner over China in resource-rich African nations.
- Canada and Australia, as trusted allies with robust governance frameworks, have become priority partners for rare earth and critical mineral cooperation. Both nations have significant reserves and are expanding output to meet Western demand.
- Greenland and the Arctic region have attracted growing attention for their vast and largely untapped mineral wealth, though extraction in these environments presents significant logistical and environmental challenges.
- Kazakhstan and Central Asia offer another avenue, with the EU pursuing strategic raw materials agreements to tap into the region's uranium, chromium, and titanium reserves.
Recycling and Domestic Processing: Europe's Internal Lever
Beyond new import sources, the EU is investing heavily in building a domestic minerals processing industry and scaling up recycling infrastructure. Europe currently processes very little of the critical minerals it consumes domestically, meaning even materials extracted elsewhere in the world must often be sent to China for refining before reaching European factories. Breaking this link requires significant capital investment in refining capacity — an area where Europe is years behind.
Recycling end-of-life electronics, batteries, and industrial equipment represents a growing secondary source of critical materials that reduces dependence on primary extraction entirely. The EU's battery regulation and ecodesign rules are partly designed with this strategic objective in mind.
The Road Ahead: Strategic Urgency Meets Structural Complexity
Europe's minerals challenge will not be solved quickly. Mining projects take a decade or more to move from discovery to production, processing capacity requires years to build, and geopolitical partnerships must be carefully managed to be durable. Against a backdrop of accelerating rearmament timelines and a China that has demonstrated its readiness to use economic tools for strategic ends, the EU faces a race against the clock.
For European policymakers and defense industry leaders, the lesson is increasingly clear: military sovereignty in the 21st century begins not in shipyards or ammunition factories, but deep in the supply chains of the minerals that make modern weapons possible. Securing those chains is no longer just an industrial policy question — it is a matter of strategic survival.