“There is oil in the Middle East; there is rare earth in China.”
Deng Xiaoping
Published in October 2015, David S. Abraham’s book, The Elements of Power “tracks the trail of rare earth metals from mine to gadget”. Working in the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry he had a ring-side seat to watch how the escalation of a territorial dispute between Japan and China evolved to a situation where China cut off its rare earth metal exports to Japan. As Abraham’s outlines, China was now using a new geopolitical trump card with its competitors, “The battle over resources, which started when the first person learned how to coax metal from stone, had expanded into a larger battle-a war over the periodic table.”