In early October China announced that it would significantly expand its controls on exports of critical minerals, including rare earths. This was widely perceived as a further escalation in the geopolitical competition between China and the United States, which has seen both sides using export controls against the other. The episode drove home just how vulnerable many industrial supply chains are—not least those of arms industries—to such manoeuvring. It also raises questions about whether the politicization of export controls is undermining their original purpose as a tool of non-proliferation.
Since 2020 China has taken a series of steps to strengthen its national export control system. These are mentioned in a white paper that China released last month on its approach to arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation––its first such document since 2012. Since 2023 these steps have included progressively tightening controls over the export of critical minerals. This has been parsed as a response to US restrictions on the transfer of strategic technologies to China. The scope and range of China’s export control measures, combined with its near monopoly in critical minerals, mean China could severely disrupt global supply chains in many strategic sectors, including arms production—at a time when many states are engaged in large-scale military modernization and rearmament programmes.
This backgrounder examines recent developments and their implications with a focus on Australia, which provides an interesting case study for several reasons. Australia relies heavily on foreign partners to implement its military modernization and expansion plans, particularly the USA through the AUKUS security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA. Furthermore, while Australia is rich in rare earth resources, it has to send them abroad—often to China—for processing and refining. Finally, Australia is interesting because of its key role in US plans to mitigate the effects of China’s export controls by identifying and developing new sources of critical minerals.
US restrictions on exports of critical technologies to China
This mix of objectives is reflected in the widening set of export control measures that since 2018, the USA, alone or in coordination with its allies, has imposed on transfers of critical technologies to China, including advanced semiconductors, related manufacturing equipment and quantum computers.
Under the administration of President Joe Biden, the US government justified the measures it imposed as being a response to China’s long-standing Military–Civil Fusion strategy, which aims to harness innovation in the civilian sector to strengthen the Chinese military. The US government also openly acknowledged that it was seeking to use export controls to maintain US leadership over China in certain key technology areas.
The America First Trade Policy adopted under Donald J. Trump’s second presidency signals a growing willingness to use export controls for national security and economic objectives and to ‘maintain, obtain and enhance’ the USA’s ‘technological edge’, including by closing regulatory gaps that would allow the transfer of strategic technologies to the USA’s rivals. Additionally, the current US administration has made unprecedented use of tariffs to pursue national security objectives and to gain leverage in trade negotiations with China.
China’s export controls on critical minerals
In 2020 China adopted a new export control law. The government has, among other things, used instruments developed under this framework to respond to restrictions on transfers of strategic technologies imposed by the USA and other countries and, since 2025, to trade tariffs on Chinese imports threatened or adopted by the USA. For example, China has added a number of US businesses, including several arms producers, to its Unreliable Entity List (UEL)––which can be used to prohibit or to restrict listed companies from ‘engaging in import and export activities related to China’––and to its control list––which prohibits the export of dual-use items (i.e. items that could have both civilian and military applications) to listed companies. China also maintains a watch list of entities that do not cooperate with its end-user verification requirements and makes it more onerous to do business with those entities.
Additionally, since 2023 China has tightened controls on exports of certain critical minerals, including rare earths and related processing technologies. The controls included creating new export licensing requirementsor prohibiting transfers to specific destinations. For example, in December 2024 China prohibited the export of gallium, germanium and some other materials to the USA. On 9 October this year China further expanded the range of rare earths and associated mining and processing technologies requiring an export licence. This came days after the USA adopted the so-called Affiliates Rule, significantly expanding the number of companies subject to US end-user export controls.
The 9 October measures included extraterritorial controls on the export of items that contain rare earths originating in China or produced with Chinese technology. China’s new measures also prohibited exports to foreign military end-users as well as to entities or their subsidiaries that are on either the watch list or the control list, while adding yet more US arms companies to the UEL. However, the implementation of these new restrictions and controls was suspended for one year following negotiations with the USA on 30 October. A few days later, China announced it was suspending other older restrictions, such as the ban on the export of gallium and germanium to the USA. The USA then suspended implementation of the Affiliates Rule for one year.
The scope and range of China’s export controls on critical minerals make them potentially disruptive in several ways. Most of the controls that China has adopted go beyond those agreed in the multilateral export control regimes. Furthermore, while not all China’s measures constitute total bans, rolling out a licensing system to implement new controls and introducing more stringent requirements for licensing applications could lead to significant delays in approving transfers.
China has near monopolies both on mining outputs of rare earths and several other critical minerals and on related processing and refining technologies. By controlling their export, China could thus disrupt global supply chains of a range of strategically important sectors, such as energy and automotives, but also defence and aerospace, not least in states that are modernizing and strengthening their military capabilities.
Australia’s arms industry and its vulnerability to supply-chain disruptions
Despite efforts to make its arms industry more independent, Australia relies on imports of arms and other military equipment to fully address the needs of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Australia was the world’s seventh largest importer of major conventional weapons in 2020–24, with the USA supplying more than 80 per cent of those imports.
Australia’s arms industry is mostly made up of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As a consequence of limited national demand and years of deindustrialization, the industry is specialized in services, and its production capacity is mostly geared towards maintenance and repair. Most of the locally based prime contractors producing final platforms commissioned by the ADF are foreign owned. For example, BAE Systems Australia, a subsidiary of the British company BAE Systems, is responsible for producing a new class of frigate, ordered in 2024 for the Royal Australian Navy. The ADF depends on foreign suppliers’ designs for its equipment, which can restrict its autonomy in the field.
Australia’s dependence on international supply chains for its military modernization and expansion goes beyond finished products. Many modern weapon systems incorporate critical minerals, including rare earths, for which Australia remains dependent on foreign processing and refining despite having significant critical minerals resources on its territory. Australia lacks a viable downstream industry in this sector due to the difficulties that locally based companies have experienced in attracting investments and maintaining profitability in the face of Chinese competition.
Australia has renewed its efforts to address the gaps in its critical mineral industry, for instance by joining the US-led Minerals Security Partnership in 2022, by launching a Critical Minerals Strategy in 2023 and by introducing a tax incentive scheme for critical mineral processing in Australia earlier this year. Most recently, partly in an attempt to position itself as a potential alternative supplier of critical minerals, Australia joined the United States–Australia Critical Minerals Framework in October. Under this agreement, both countries pledge to mobilize investments for mining projects. Despite these efforts, reducing Australia’s dependency on China for critical minerals will be a long-term task.
Ramping up arms manufacturing and critical minerals production
Currently, Australia is going through the most significant changes in its defence posture for a generation. The ADF is being prepared to respond to major power conflict in Australia’s own region. As part of this, Australia’s 2024 National Defence Strategy (NDS) aims to expand the country’s strategic conventional capabilities, while also modernizing its existing forces. The strategy is supported by an ongoing plan to increase defence investment over the next decade, as presented in the 2024 Integrated Investment Program.
Another central pillar of the NDS is developing a ‘sovereign defence industrial base’. The 2024 Defence Industry Development Strategy identifies seven priorities, including the domestic manufacture of guided weapons, continuous naval shipbuilding, and the development and integration of autonomous systems. The sovereign defence industrial base is defined by geography rather than ownership, encompassing ‘businesses with an industrial capability in Australia’, including subsidiaries of foreign-owned firms.
Given their scale and complexity, these initiatives will be challenging to implement. Achieving the intended outcomes of the NDS and related documents will require not only financial resources but also a skilled workforce, consistent political support and sufficient industrial capacity. The Defence Industry Development Strategy seeks to fill these gaps with plans for co-design, co-development, co-production and co-sustainment of capabilities ‘with trusted international partners’.
Establishing and maintaining such international partnerships also entails some challenges. Australia’s defence posture is deeply influenced by its alliance with the USA, and the current focus on capability acquisition is particularly centred on technology sharing under the AUKUS framework.
AUKUS consists of two ‘pillars’, the first focused on delivering nuclear-powered, conventionally armed attack submarines (SSNs) to Australia through the 2030s and 2040s and the second focused on developing a suite of emerging military-relevant technologies, from cyber to hypersonic missiles to autonomous underwater vehicles. While interoperability with US systems may enhance joint operations, it also creates vulnerabilities if US policy changes or support diminishes. Australia’s ability to diversify its suppliers to mitigate the impact of Chinese export controls targeting US companies is limited by the level of integration into US support systems, such as satellite and communication systems.
Australia’s economic relationship with China adds further complexity. Although the NDS acknowledges that increasing competition between the USA and China creates ‘challenges to regional stability and prosperity’, Australia remains economically connected to Chinese markets, including in the mining sector. China remains Australia’s largest trading partner by some margin, accounting for 37 per cent of Australia’s goods exports and 26 per cent of its imports in 2024. Australia’s conflicting dependencies—strategic alignment with the USA and economic ties to China—combined with the gaps in its domestic defence industrial base, may limit Australia’s ability to respond independently in a crisis. These concerns are particularly salient given the current trade tensions between China and the USA and their potential to escalate.
How China’s new export controls could impact Australia
Pillar 1 of the AUKUS framework concerns the establishment of an Australian SSN fleet within reach of the South China Sea—with Australia purchasing second-hand US Virginia-class SSNs from 2032 and then finally launching a fleet of new SSNs in the 2040s. Both of these stages could be affected by China’s export controls.
The US shipbuilding company Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) is critical to the US Navy’s ability to increase the production of new Virginia-class SSNs, which in turn will allow for the sale of second-hand vessels to Australia. However, HII was added to both the UEL and China’s export control list, which means that even with the suspension of the 9 October measures, HII may still find itself unable to buy Chinese critical materials and any other dual-use items in the Chinese export control list. Any resulting delays in the production lines of HII or its subsidiaries for new SSNs are likely to delay delivery of second-hand SSNs to Australia. Furthermore, the Australian government-owned submarine builder ASC has entered into a joint venture with another producer on the UEL, BAE Systems, to design and build the new SSN-AUKUS fleet.
When it comes to the advanced capabilities to be developed under Pillar 2 of AUKUS, arms companies Leidos and Lockheed Martin, both of which are positioning themselves for contracts in relation to Australia’s long-range strike capability, have been added to China’s control list and UEL, respectively. Leidos is also emerging as one of the key developers of secure programmes likely to facilitate information sharing between the AUKUS states.
Beyond the entity listing, China’s wider restrictions on the sale of critical minerals pose serious challenges to foreign arms manufacturers, particularly in the West. Each Virginia-class submarine, for example, reportedly requires more than 4 tonnes of rare earth elements. Many of the technologies included under Pillar 2 of AUKUS, including radar, sensors and sonar systems, also require rare earths. Another of the key capabilities being developed under Pillar 2 is hypersonic missile technology, where the main focus is on the joint US–Australian Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE). The missile under development will use scramjet rocket technology, which requires corrosion-resistant alloys in order to withstand extreme temperatures and pressures. These alloys currently contain rare earths.
The wider risks of politicizing export controls
Given all these dependencies, Australia’s military modernization and expansion plans are highly vulnerable to China’s attempts to restrict international supplies of critical minerals, including its latest round of export control measures—should they eventually be implemented—and targeted restrictions towards US arms companies. In that regard, the case of Australia embodies the possible implications that the increased politicization of export controls has for global supply chains and industrial cooperation, in and beyond arms industries.
But the risks of politicizing export controls run even deeper. Export controls were originally developed to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or transfers that could facilitate the misuse and diversion of conventional weapons and related technologies. They are based on a common understanding among like-minded states that failure to prevent such transfers would pose a threat to international peace and security.
China’s new white paper on arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation reaffirms its commitment to these principles, stating that the ‘international nonproliferation regime plays an important role in preventing and deferring the proliferation of WMD and their means of delivery and in safeguarding international and regional peace and security’.
However, in the context of mounting confrontation between China and the USA, export controls are instead increasingly being used unilaterally to advance national economic, security and foreign policy objectives and as a way to manage competition with rivals. This shift threatens to undermine multilateral cooperation in the field of export controls and, ultimately, global non-proliferation objectives.
This development raises wider questions about the future role of export controls, particularly whether they will continue to fulfil their original non-proliferation purposes and whether multilateral cooperation on export control remains possible in a context of intensifying geopolitical competition.
With support from the Australia Department of Defence, SIPRI is conducting a project examining China’s export controls and their implications for the multilateral export control regimes that underpin non-proliferation efforts as well as for Australia’s National Defence Strategy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Jade Guiberteau Ricard is a Research Assistant in the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.
Giovanna Maletta is a Senior Researcher in the SIPRI Dual-Use and Arms Trade Control Programme.
Dr Benjamin Zala is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
In early October China announced that it would significantly expand its controls on exports of critical minerals, including rare earths. This was widely perceived as a further escalation in the geopolitical competition between China and the United States, which has seen both sides using export controls against the other. The episode drove home just how vulnerable many industrial supply chains are—not least those of arms industries—to such manoeuvring. It also raises questions about whether the politicization of export controls is undermining their original purpose as a tool of non-proliferation.
Since 2020 China has taken a series of steps to strengthen its national export control system. These are mentioned in a white paper that China released last month on its approach to arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation––its first such document since 2012. Since 2023 these steps have included progressively tightening controls over the export of critical minerals. This has been parsed as a response to US restrictions on the transfer of strategic technologies to China. The scope and range of China’s export control measures, combined with its near monopoly in critical minerals, mean China could severely disrupt global supply chains in many strategic sectors, including arms production—at a time when many states are engaged in large-scale military modernization and rearmament programmes.
This backgrounder examines recent developments and their implications with a focus on Australia, which provides an interesting case study for several reasons. Australia relies heavily on foreign partners to implement its military modernization and expansion plans, particularly the USA through the AUKUS security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA. Furthermore, while Australia is rich in rare earth resources, it has to send them abroad—often to China—for processing and refining. Finally, Australia is interesting because of its key role in US plans to mitigate the effects of China’s export controls by identifying and developing new sources of critical minerals.
US restrictions on exports of critical technologies to China
A key focus of US export controls is to ensure that controls agreed within the four multilateral export control regimes (the Australia Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement) are implemented at the national level. US export controls also aim to support national security and economic objectives as well as ‘promoting continued US strategic technology leadership’. Accordingly, the USA is ‘willing to adopt unilateral national controls if its security or economic interests are at stake’.
This mix of objectives is reflected in the widening set of export control measures that since 2018, the USA, alone or in coordination with its allies, has imposed on transfers of critical technologies to China, including advanced semiconductors, related manufacturing equipment and quantum computers.
Under the administration of President Joe Biden, the US government justified the measures it imposed as being a response to China’s long-standing Military–Civil Fusion strategy, which aims to harness innovation in the civilian sector to strengthen the Chinese military. The US government also openly acknowledged that it was seeking to use export controls to maintain US leadership over China in certain key technology areas.
The America First Trade Policy adopted under Donald J. Trump’s second presidency signals a growing willingness to use export controls for national security and economic objectives and to ‘maintain, obtain and enhance’ the USA’s ‘technological edge’, including by closing regulatory gaps that would allow the transfer of strategic technologies to the USA’s rivals. Additionally, the current US administration has made unprecedented use of tariffs to pursue national security objectives and to gain leverage in trade negotiations with China.
China’s export controls on critical minerals
In 2020 China adopted a new export control law. The government has, among other things, used instruments developed under this framework to respond to restrictions on transfers of strategic technologies imposed by the USA and other countries and, since 2025, to trade tariffs on Chinese imports threatened or adopted by the USA. For example, China has added a number of US businesses, including several arms producers, to its Unreliable Entity List (UEL)––which can be used to prohibit or to restrict listed companies from ‘engaging in import and export activities related to China’––and to its control list––which prohibits the export of dual-use items (i.e. items that could have both civilian and military applications) to listed companies. China also maintains a watch list of entities that do not cooperate with its end-user verification requirements and makes it more onerous to do business with those entities.
Additionally, since 2023 China has tightened controls on exports of certain critical minerals, including rare earths and related processing technologies. The controls included creating new export licensing requirementsor prohibiting transfers to specific destinations. For example, in December 2024 China prohibited the export of gallium, germanium and some other materials to the USA. On 9 October this year China further expanded the range of rare earths and associated mining and processing technologies requiring an export licence. This came days after the USA adopted the so-called Affiliates Rule, significantly expanding the number of companies subject to US end-user export controls.
The 9 October measures included extraterritorial controls on the export of items that contain rare earths originating in China or produced with Chinese technology. China’s new measures also prohibited exports to foreign military end-users as well as to entities or their subsidiaries that are on either the watch list or the control list, while adding yet more US arms companies to the UEL. However, the implementation of these new restrictions and controls was suspended for one year following negotiations with the USA on 30 October. A few days later, China announced it was suspending other older restrictions, such as the ban on the export of gallium and germanium to the USA. The USA then suspended implementation of the Affiliates Rule for one year.
The scope and range of China’s export controls on critical minerals make them potentially disruptive in several ways. Most of the controls that China has adopted go beyond those agreed in the multilateral export control regimes. Furthermore, while not all China’s measures constitute total bans, rolling out a licensing system to implement new controls and introducing more stringent requirements for licensing applications could lead to significant delays in approving transfers.
China has near monopolies both on mining outputs of rare earths and several other critical minerals and on related processing and refining technologies. By controlling their export, China could thus disrupt global supply chains of a range of strategically important sectors, such as energy and automotives, but also defence and aerospace, not least in states that are modernizing and strengthening their military capabilities.
Australia’s arms industry and its vulnerability to supply-chain disruptions
Despite efforts to make its arms industry more independent, Australia relies on imports of arms and other military equipment to fully address the needs of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Australia was the world’s seventh largest importer of major conventional weapons in 2020–24, with the USA supplying more than 80 per cent of those imports.
Australia’s arms industry is mostly made up of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As a consequence of limited national demand and years of deindustrialization, the industry is specialized in services, and its production capacity is mostly geared towards maintenance and repair. Most of the locally based prime contractors producing final platforms commissioned by the ADF are foreign owned. For example, BAE Systems Australia, a subsidiary of the British company BAE Systems, is responsible for producing a new class of frigate, ordered in 2024 for the Royal Australian Navy. The ADF depends on foreign suppliers’ designs for its equipment, which can restrict its autonomy in the field.
Australia’s dependence on international supply chains for its military modernization and expansion goes beyond finished products. Many modern weapon systems incorporate critical minerals, including rare earths, for which Australia remains dependent on foreign processing and refining despite having significant critical minerals resources on its territory. Australia lacks a viable downstream industry in this sector due to the difficulties that locally based companies have experienced in attracting investments and maintaining profitability in the face of Chinese competition.
Australia has renewed its efforts to address the gaps in its critical mineral industry, for instance by joining the US-led Minerals Security Partnership in 2022, by launching a Critical Minerals Strategy in 2023 and by introducing a tax incentive scheme for critical mineral processing in Australia earlier this year. Most recently, partly in an attempt to position itself as a potential alternative supplier of critical minerals, Australia joined the United States–Australia Critical Minerals Framework in October. Under this agreement, both countries pledge to mobilize investments for mining projects. Despite these efforts, reducing Australia’s dependency on China for critical minerals will be a long-term task.
Ramping up arms manufacturing and critical minerals production
Currently, Australia is going through the most significant changes in its defence posture for a generation. The ADF is being prepared to respond to major power conflict in Australia’s own region. As part of this, Australia’s 2024 National Defence Strategy (NDS) aims to expand the country’s strategic conventional capabilities, while also modernizing its existing forces. The strategy is supported by an ongoing plan to increase defence investment over the next decade, as presented in the 2024 Integrated Investment Program.
Another central pillar of the NDS is developing a ‘sovereign defence industrial base’. The 2024 Defence Industry Development Strategy identifies seven priorities, including the domestic manufacture of guided weapons, continuous naval shipbuilding, and the development and integration of autonomous systems. The sovereign defence industrial base is defined by geography rather than ownership, encompassing ‘businesses with an industrial capability in Australia’, including subsidiaries of foreign-owned firms.
Given their scale and complexity, these initiatives will be challenging to implement. Achieving the intended outcomes of the NDS and related documents will require not only financial resources but also a skilled workforce, consistent political support and sufficient industrial capacity. The Defence Industry Development Strategy seeks to fill these gaps with plans for co-design, co-development, co-production and co-sustainment of capabilities ‘with trusted international partners’.
Establishing and maintaining such international partnerships also entails some challenges. Australia’s defence posture is deeply influenced by its alliance with the USA, and the current focus on capability acquisition is particularly centred on technology sharing under the AUKUS framework.
AUKUS consists of two ‘pillars’, the first focused on delivering nuclear-powered, conventionally armed attack submarines (SSNs) to Australia through the 2030s and 2040s and the second focused on developing a suite of emerging military-relevant technologies, from cyber to hypersonic missiles to autonomous underwater vehicles. While interoperability with US systems may enhance joint operations, it also creates vulnerabilities if US policy changes or support diminishes. Australia’s ability to diversify its suppliers to mitigate the impact of Chinese export controls targeting US companies is limited by the level of integration into US support systems, such as satellite and communication systems.
Australia’s economic relationship with China adds further complexity. Although the NDS acknowledges that increasing competition between the USA and China creates ‘challenges to regional stability and prosperity’, Australia remains economically connected to Chinese markets, including in the mining sector. China remains Australia’s largest trading partner by some margin, accounting for 37 per cent of Australia’s goods exports and 26 per cent of its imports in 2024. Australia’s conflicting dependencies—strategic alignment with the USA and economic ties to China—combined with the gaps in its domestic defence industrial base, may limit Australia’s ability to respond independently in a crisis. These concerns are particularly salient given the current trade tensions between China and the USA and their potential to escalate.
How China’s new export controls could impact Australia
Pillar 1 of the AUKUS framework concerns the establishment of an Australian SSN fleet within reach of the South China Sea—with Australia purchasing second-hand US Virginia-class SSNs from 2032 and then finally launching a fleet of new SSNs in the 2040s. Both of these stages could be affected by China’s export controls.
The US shipbuilding company Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) is critical to the US Navy’s ability to increase the production of new Virginia-class SSNs, which in turn will allow for the sale of second-hand vessels to Australia. However, HII was added to both the UEL and China’s export control list, which means that even with the suspension of the 9 October measures, HII may still find itself unable to buy Chinese critical materials and any other dual-use items in the Chinese export control list. Any resulting delays in the production lines of HII or its subsidiaries for new SSNs are likely to delay delivery of second-hand SSNs to Australia. Furthermore, the Australian government-owned submarine builder ASC has entered into a joint venture with another producer on the UEL, BAE Systems, to design and build the new SSN-AUKUS fleet.
When it comes to the advanced capabilities to be developed under Pillar 2 of AUKUS, arms companies Leidos and Lockheed Martin, both of which are positioning themselves for contracts in relation to Australia’s long-range strike capability, have been added to China’s control list and UEL, respectively. Leidos is also emerging as one of the key developers of secure programmes likely to facilitate information sharing between the AUKUS states.
Beyond the entity listing, China’s wider restrictions on the sale of critical minerals pose serious challenges to foreign arms manufacturers, particularly in the West. Each Virginia-class submarine, for example, reportedly requires more than 4 tonnes of rare earth elements. Many of the technologies included under Pillar 2 of AUKUS, including radar, sensors and sonar systems, also require rare earths. Another of the key capabilities being developed under Pillar 2 is hypersonic missile technology, where the main focus is on the joint US–Australian Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE). The missile under development will use scramjet rocket technology, which requires corrosion-resistant alloys in order to withstand extreme temperatures and pressures. These alloys currently contain rare earths.
The wider risks of politicizing export controls
Given all these dependencies, Australia’s military modernization and expansion plans are highly vulnerable to China’s attempts to restrict international supplies of critical minerals, including its latest round of export control measures—should they eventually be implemented—and targeted restrictions towards US arms companies. In that regard, the case of Australia embodies the possible implications that the increased politicization of export controls has for global supply chains and industrial cooperation, in and beyond arms industries.
But the risks of politicizing export controls run even deeper. Export controls were originally developed to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or transfers that could facilitate the misuse and diversion of conventional weapons and related technologies. They are based on a common understanding among like-minded states that failure to prevent such transfers would pose a threat to international peace and security.
China’s new white paper on arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation reaffirms its commitment to these principles, stating that the ‘international nonproliferation regime plays an important role in preventing and deferring the proliferation of WMD and their means of delivery and in safeguarding international and regional peace and security’.
However, in the context of mounting confrontation between China and the USA, export controls are instead increasingly being used unilaterally to advance national economic, security and foreign policy objectives and as a way to manage competition with rivals. This shift threatens to undermine multilateral cooperation in the field of export controls and, ultimately, global non-proliferation objectives.
This development raises wider questions about the future role of export controls, particularly whether they will continue to fulfil their original non-proliferation purposes and whether multilateral cooperation on export control remains possible in a context of intensifying geopolitical competition.
With support from the Australia Department of Defence, SIPRI is conducting a project examining China’s export controls and their implications for the multilateral export control regimes that underpin non-proliferation efforts as well as for Australia’s National Defence Strategy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)