[mort96]

Stockpile 10 years worth of the entire west's consumption of rare earth minerals? That's not gonna be cheap. Would China even have the production capacity to handle it in a reasonable time frame?

[williamdclt]

Would China even want to sell it, even if they could? Letting a country stockpile doesn't seem in their interest: the whole reason you want to do it is to reduce reliance on them, they'd probably want to keep you hooked

[floatrock]

We're letting them buy all our gold reserves and water rights (see alfalfa farming in the West), so everyone's got their price.

Question is whats more cost-effective: paying market rates to secretly stockpile, or paying for another Iraq or Afghanistan in the south china sea...