In 2025, Chinese authorities imposed export controls on seven rare earth elements, effectively enabling them to deny access to these materials – over which China holds a global near-monopoly – to foreign purchasers. This was the first time that China deployed a tool from its economic warfare arsenal in a meaningful manner, to respond to continuing escalation of US tariffs and semiconductor export controls. However, the development of that arsenal has resulted in a situation where the weaponization of interdependencies and chokeholds in global economic flows is no longer the sole preserve of the US and its allies. Currently, no academic study has comprehensively addressed the way in which China has diagnosed, and responded to, economic warfare and weaponized interdependence at the global scale. To remedy this, this paper will address both the ideational and organizational sides of China’s economic warfare toolkit. On the ideational side, it will survey evolving perceptions among Chinese policy makers on the emergence of economic warfare, and how these frame policy responses. On the organizational side, it will map the different sanction and countersanction regimes China has developed, as well as the bureaucratic capabilities to implement them in practice. As such, this paper will contribute to the academic literature an empirical study of the world’s second largest technology and trade power, as well as suggestions for further theory-building.

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