U.S. media has broken the silence, stating that in addition to rare earths, China has three more methods to choke the U.S. Actually, this is still an understatement. If the U.S. really wants to be taken down, it's far more than these three methods. These aren't just choking the U.S., they're suffocating it.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that, in addition to rare earths, China has three major product categories that can choke the U.S. This report aims to exaggerate the issue and put more pressure on the political circles. However, in fact, the author may have underestimated China's position in the global supply chain. The number of things China can use to choke the U.S. is certainly not limited to these three.
Let's first look at what three categories of choke products the Wall Street Journal mentioned.
(China holds a dominant position in the lithium battery market)
Firstly, lithium batteries. There are different opinions about the rankings of lithium battery manufacturers. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the top five global lithium battery manufacturers are Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd (CATL), BYD, LG Energy Solution, EVE Energy, and Samsung SDI. Other statistics give different rankings, especially reserving a spot for Japanese Panasonic in the top 10. However, none of these change the overall situation.
CATL and BYD's absolute advantage is something that Japanese and South Korean companies cannot shake. More importantly, even Japanese and South Korean lithium battery companies highly depend on Chinese supply chains for materials and components. For example, China produces 79% of the positive electrode materials and 92% of the negative electrode materials for batteries globally, 63% of refined lithium, 80% of refined cobalt supply, and 98% of refined graphite.
If we go deeper into the细分, dividing them into automotive batteries, consumer electronics batteries, and drone batteries, China's advantages in some niche markets might be even greater. Especially in military high-performance lithium batteries, China has already taken a significant lead, with the emergence of the 100-tank being the most obvious example. At the same time, the U.S. Army is unable to turn hybrid tanks into reality due to the lack of high-performance lithium batteries.
(New energy vehicles are a major consumer of China's lithium batteries)
The second item is integrated circuits. Although in the domestic public opinion environment, people have always been heartbroken about the inability to produce high-end integrated circuits and the bottleneck in lithography machines. However, if we expand our vision to all integrated circuit products, China has already dominated the mid-to-low-end market, with a capacity accounting for one-third of the global total.
Here, the term "mid-to-low-end" refers to integrated circuits with larger line spacing and relatively cheaper prices, but their importance is not necessarily lower than that of high-performance integrated circuits.
The incident surrounding Nexperia Semiconductor proves that in the market with line spacing over 100 nanometers, China is completely capable of choking the world, which naturally includes American vehicle companies.
(China's advantage in mid-to-low-end integrated circuit production is growing)
As China's integrated circuit production capacity extends upward, it will gain control over more supply chain links, making it more likely for the U.S., as a major consumer, to face a chokehold. After all, how many modern industrial products can be completely free of chips?
The third item is various pharmaceutical raw materials. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is one of the few industries where it has an advantage. However, to make medicines, a large amount of precursors is needed.
To obtain as much profit as possible, American pharmaceutical companies now heavily rely on precursors provided by Chinese chemical companies, including fentanyl, which the Trump administration has publicly condemned.
The U.S. government constantly accuses China of exporting fentanyl to the U.S., "poisoning the American people." But if there comes a day when China truly completely cuts off all fentanyl-related products from being exported to the U.S., then pharmacists, doctors, and users of fentanyl would probably be furious.
The U.S. itself is poor at drug control and blames China. A country where marijuana is freely sold and people openly use drugs, pointing fingers at a country that claims zero tolerance for drugs, is nothing short of absurd.
(The U.S. pharmaceutical industry depends heavily on Chinese precursors)
So does the story end here? Definitely not. Almost all daily necessities available in the U.S. market depend on the support of the Chinese supply chain. Clothing, shoes, furniture, toys, household appliances, even small items like cotton swabs, masks, and toilet paper, are mostly made in China. Even if some are produced domestically, they still rely on Chinese machinery and raw materials.
On the surface, these everyday goods can be bought from other countries. But in any other corner of the world, there is no supply chain collaboration system as seamless and cost-effective as China's. Even though Apple moved its assembly lines to India, and its capacity continues to increase, it still cannot escape the supply of Chinese electronic components.
That's why, after the U.S.-China tariff rates were raised to over 100% in April to May 2025, the U.S. quickly couldn't handle it.
After going through the turbulence of the trade war, China has become more determined to build a complete supply chain within its own borders. Except for resources such as iron ore, oil, and some feed grains that are difficult to resolve domestically, China can now produce almost every kind of industrial product. Researchers are even discussing how to directly produce starch from carbon dioxide.
The more complete China's supply chain becomes, the more methods it has to choke others. The reason China rarely used such methods before was mainly because of consideration for the normal lives of the people of relevant countries, and it did not want to take a broad-brush approach to retaliate against the U.S.
Now that it has been forced to a point of no return, it's time for the U.S. to experience the taste of being choked. Fortunately, Trump was relatively wise and quickly adjusted his policies, reaching a trade truce agreement with China. Now it's up to him to see if he can keep his word and fully implement the agreement as written.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7569786299230552622/
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