The battle for rare earths has reached the abyss. China thinks it can win there too, as it out-maneuvers the U.S. and New Zealand in the South Pacific.
Illustration by Pete Ryan
On February 14, as the ninth Asian Winter Games drew to a spectacular close, few watching Chinese state television would have recognized the stocky, open-shirted man sitting beside Premier Li Qiang in the VIP box of Harbin’s Convention and Exhibition Center.
Mark Brown, prime minister of the Cook Islands, wasn’t in Heilongjiang’s frozen capital for sport — nor its famous ice sculptures.
Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, Mark Brown, meets with Chinese Premier Li Qiang
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Taiwan is almost entirely dependent on imported fossil fuels for its power supply — a critical weakness in the event of a Chinese blockade. But the very democratic forces on the island that China would be seeking to destroy through forced unification are also standing in the way of the obvious solution: aggressive investment in nuclear power and renewable energies.
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