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ChinaMilitary

How Yunnan’s mineral wealth and border corridors could solve China’s ‘Malacca dilemma’

‘Nationally leading resource reserves’ make the province indispensable to Beijing’s push for ‘defence industry mobilisation’, report says

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Gallium is one of China’s most tightly controlled and strategically valuable tech-sector resources. Photo: Reuters
Caroline Lin
With its vast strategic mineral reserves and land corridors to Southeast Asia, China’s southwestern province of Yunnan is vital to the country’s preparedness to counter geopolitical risks, according to researchers specialising in civil-military fusion.
Yunnan’s “nationally leading resource reserves” – including gallium, rare earths and other strategic minerals essential for advanced weapons development – made the province indispensable to China’s push for “defence industry mobilisation”, they said, referring to efforts to secure reliable domestic resource supplies for arms production.

Their study was published in the academic journal Defence Industry Conversion in China, which is supervised by the national defence technology authority and aims to encourage the military-civilian dual use of technology.

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The study also described Yunnan – which borders Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam – as an “irreplaceable gateway” to resources on the Indochinese peninsula that provided an “effective solution” to China’s so-called Malacca dilemma.

This refers to Beijing’s heavy reliance on the Strait of Malacca for trade, a vulnerability that adversaries could exploit during periods of high tension.

Such concerns have intensified following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz amid the US-Israel war with Iran, which has severely disrupted the global energy market.

“Yunnan acts as a land-based lifeline that ensures the supply of mineral raw materials required for the defence industry in wartime or extreme scenarios remains free from maritime power constraints, making it the most reliable and controllable strategic guarantee corridor for critical mineral resources,” the report said.

The study proposed measures to use Yunnan’s advantages in strategic minerals to build rapid-response capabilities for potential crises and supply-chain resilience against external disruptions.

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