Global Production Networks in Rare Earth Elements and China's Strategic Thinking in Trade

Date

2025-12-30

Author

Gültekin, Ali Sinan

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This research examines the role of rare earth elements (REEs) in contemporary global capitalism through the analytical lens of Global Production Networks (GPN) with a view to explaining geopolitical implications of China‘s monopoly. It argues that China has strategically turned its natural endowment into a geopolitical asset in hegemonic rivalry. As such, REEs cannot be adequately understood through firm-centred or sector-specific frameworks such as Global Commodity Chains (GCC) or Global Value Chains (GVC), which tend to reduce analysis to governance structures and upgrading strategies. Building on the GPN literature, the thesis conceptualizes global production as a multi-actor, multi-scalar, and historically embedded process shaped by firms, states, and geopolitical competition. Empirically, it demonstrates how China has consolidated a near-monopoly over the mining, refining, and processing of REEs through long-term industrial policy, technological investment, and regulatory control. Particular attention is paid to China‘s export restrictions introduced in 2025, which are interpreted not as ad hoc trade-war instruments, but as indicative of a broader strategy to reconfigure global production networks in China‘s favour. The thesis further shows that China‘s control over REEs exposes structural vulnerabilities in global capitalism, as disruptions in the supply of systemic inputs generate cascading effects across multiple sectors. Finally, the study contributes to GPN scholarship by highlighting its strengths in analysing strategic resources while also identifying its limitations, particularly in accounting for rapid geopolitical interventions and intra-state strategic decision-making. In so doing, it calls for further theoretical refinement of GPN analysis in the context of intensifying great-power rivalry.

Subject Keywords

rare earth elements, global production networks, US-China trade war, strategic coupling, global capitalism

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/118255

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis