During Covid years, the world trembled; it was dependent on Chinese supply chains and China was weaponizing that dependence. Shortage of low-end chips had hurt car manufacturers. Automotive parts, electronics and IT components, logistics and shipping, active pharmaceutical ingredients, you name it; it appeared that the world was beholden to China for the very survival of mankind. The cruellest cut was the personal protection equipment (PPEs); face masks, gowns and surgical gloves needed to handle the Chinese pandemic. In early 2020, China produced 83% of world’s PPE demand and the dragon turned the tragedy into profit. The prices increased up to ten times almost overnight. One Chinese manufacturer of face masks had gloated – it is not a mask-making machine; it is a currency printing machine.

The world was more resilient than Xi Jinping had thought; in the US, automakers like Ford and General Motors (GM) retooled factories to produce masks, gown and ventilators. On 21, March, 2020 GM approached Esys Automation, a Michigan-based integrator, which is part of Hitachi, specializing in advanced robotic systems and software for automotive assembly, apparently oceans away from masks and surgical gloves. Just a week later, the first batch of masks rolled out. Such stories remain unknown because the world has swallowed China byline that the Communists are efficient and capitalism is sluggish. If that was true, the USSR would never have collapsed.

No Chinese monopoly has been natural; before China emerged as the world’s factory, most of the monopolies were with the West, some like garments were in South Asia. Subsidies, stolen or robbed intellectual property rights for which the West had spent hundreds of billions, reverse engineering and ignoring the pollution costs enabled China to offer goods at ridiculously low prices, mostly below actual cost. The factories outside China were either bankrupted or they relocated to China, taking their IPRs with them, one necessary condition for being in business in China. The other was that all these large factories were required by law to have a Communist Party of China (CCP) module and its head was a necessary member of the board of directors, effectively bringing all foreign manufacturers under state control.

Those of the readers who have trekked in high mountains would know that if you take a short-cut, it leaves you so tired that ultimately you are a laggard. These short-cuts have brought China this farther, but may not take it much further. PPEs were not the only Chinese monopoly which crumbled in a short time. Post-Covid, which may be called the era of world enlightenment to the dangers posed by China, its other monopolies too proved equally fragile.

Lithium was frequently mentioned as an absolute Chinese monopoly that would allow the dragon to hold the world in its claws. In fact, China had never enjoyed source-monopoly of lithium; its toolkit merely enabled it to grab monopoly of processing from Chile, the US and Australia; US was the leading producer in the 1990s before yielding it, under environmentalists’ pressure to Chile in the 2000s, which surrendered it to China. China offered the finished product at such a low cost, that the processing centres around the world got closed. Lithium processing is a highly polluting activity and the leftists, China’s lackeys around the world, posing as environmentalists, came in handy for shutting down these facilities outside China, even as Chinese state-owned companies bought controlling stakes in lithium mines around the world. Subsequently, China found domestic lithium reserves but these are in difficult areas like Tibet and China continues to be dependent on imported lithium raw material.

China’s wolf-warrior arrogance during the Covid years woke up the world to this lithium processing dependence and soon incentives were announced in various countries. Australia and Canada collaborated with the US for setting up state-supported processing facilities and Europe soon followed suit. Companies like GM adopted vertical integration from mining to processing. The US and Europe are using ‘friendshoring’ with India, Japan and Canada to pool resources and align policies to neutralise Chinese market price manipulation. The EU passed the Critical Raw Materials Act to ensure that, by 2030, no single country supplies more than 65% of any strategic material. The US passed the Defense Production Act for avoiding Chinese materials in Defence and for developing a “Critical Minerals Ministerial” to secure non-Chinese supply chains.

An alarmed China worked at breakneck speed to shift the world to sodium-ion batteries; as of October, 2025 China had produced 90% of global output of these batteries. But now, the democracies, with all their slow, deliberative decision-making, were69 wiser to the Chinese monopoly threats. The basic raw material for sodium-ion batteries is soda-ash and of the 25 billion tonnes reserves globally, 23 billion tonnes are in the US, which is now providing grants to promote local manufacturing. Companies like Acculon Energy, Bedrock Materials and Natron Energy have taken advantage of these incentives and will soon provide competition to Chinese battery makers. Since Sodium-ion batteries are heavy, the US focus is on stationary grid-scale storage to neutralise the infirmness of wind and solar energy.

Rare earths and magnets made from these are another area in which China bared its fangs at the world. The story, however, goes back to 2010 when Japan detained a Chinese fishing boat near Japan’s Senkaku Islands, which China covets. China retaliated by restricting rare earth exports to Japan. That led to rapid investments in the sector. The US, however, has remained in political turmoil during Trump’s first term and then during Biden’s term. Then in 2025, when Trump imposed steep tariffs on China, the latter blocked export of rare earths and magnets to the US forcing Trump to beat a hasty tactical retreat.

Beijing monopoly in this area has been described as an “existential threat” for the West as it has a stranglehold over manufacturing, green energy as well as over national security. Now the US is aggressively taking counter measures to ensure vertical integration of “mine-to-magnet” supply by investing billions in domestic mining, processing and magnet production. Up to $12 billion are being invested in “project Vault” creating critical mineral stockpiles while Chinese origin magnets are being banned from US defence systems. US companies like MP Materials and USA Rare Earth have taken advantage of the loans and financial support to the tune of $500 million for stock acquisition, being channelised through the Department of Defence.

On a less tech-heavy front, India, which has always been strong in leather footwear, is now focussing on growth in non-leather high-performance sneaker sector to match the Chinese. Among others, Tamil Nadu has emerged as a major footwear cluster which has attracted major brands like Nike, Puma, Crocs and New Balance. In a story in April 2025 “A revolution is under way in India’s trainer industry,” the BBC had said that Taiwan’s Hong Fu Industrial Group, globally the second largest maker of sneakers, which supplies to Nike, Converse, Adidas, Puma and others, was building a giant plant in Panapakkam in Tamil Nadu. It will have a capacity for making 25 million pairs every year, making a big dent in China’s clout in this sector.

China’s contrived monopolies proved brittle as Chinese rice paper when the world moved with determination and the weaponization of these monopolies has seriously dented China’s soft power. Xi Jinping has been exhorting the Chinese diplomats and diaspora to “tell China’s stories well.” His own short-sighted hegemonic geopolitics, however, tells a rather unpleasant story. / DAILY WORLD /

( R N prasher is a former IAS officer. The views expressed are his personal.)