WORLD ROUNDUPChina Tightens Its Grip on Yet Another Critical Mineral | Immigration Spotlight on a German City, and more

China Tightens Its Grip on Yet Another Critical Mineral  (Christina Lu, Foreign Policy)
More than a year after China rattled the West by imposing export controls on gallium and germanium, two powerful chipmaking inputs, Beijing flexed its muscles again this month by announcing curbs on another key, yet often overlooked, metal: antimony.
Antimony may seem like an obscure material, but it is vital in the defense industry, with critical uses in nuclear weapons, infrared missiles, and night-vision equipment. No country maintains as dominant a grip on the metal’s global trade as China, which accounts for nearly half of all production and more than 60 percent of U.S. imports. Beginning Sept. 15, Beijing will require exporters to apply for a license for certain antimony products as well as require permission for related smelting and separation technology exports.
For Washington and its European partners, this latest move has only reinforced the importance of diversifying away from Chinese-dominated mineral supply chains. Yet it has also underscored an uncomfortable reality: No matter how eager Western powers are to slash their dependence on China, they will likely remain vulnerable to such measures in the immediate future, given the many challenges in securing alternative sources and the necessary financing.
The risks of supply chain over-dependence on a geopolitical rival were thrown into the spotlight when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and weaponized its natural gas supply against its European buyers. At the time, Russian exports accounted for about 47 percent of Europe’s total gas supply, and Moscow’s retaliatory energy cutoffs pitched dependent nations into a severe energy crisis. But those measures also turbocharged European efforts to transition away from Russia’s supply, and in 2023, less than 15 percent of Europe’s total gas supply came from Moscow.
China, similarly, has wielded its critical mineral dominance as leverage in geopolitical spats, perhaps most notably when it cut rare-earth exports to Japan in 2010. After unveiling gallium and germanium trade curbs last summer, Beijing also imposed new restrictions on exports of graphite—which underpins electric vehicle batteries—last year.

A Fatal Knife Attack Puts an Immigration Spotlight on a German City  (Christopher F. Schuetze, New York Times)
Two days after a deadly knife attack in the German city of Solingen, the youth wing of the far-right AfD party put out a call for supporters to stage a protest demanding the government do more to deport migrants denied asylum.
The authorities had identified the suspect in the stabbing spree that killed three people and wounded eight others as a Syrian man who was in the country despite having been denied asylum and who prosecutors suspected had joined the Islamic State. The attack tore at the fabric of the ethnically diverse, working-class city in the country’s west.
But even before the right-wing protests had begun on Sunday, scores of counterprotesters had gathered in front of the group home that housed the suspect and other refugees. They carried banners that read, “Welcome to refugees” and “Fascism is not an opinion, but a crime,” and railed against those who would use the attack to further inflame an already fraught national debate over immigration and refugees.
The dueling protests — not unlike those recently in Britain — are emblematic of Germany’s longstanding tug of war over how to deal with a large influx of asylum seekers in recent years. The country needs immigration to bolster its work force, but the government often finds itself on the defensive against an increasingly powerful AfD.