Deputy Secretary of State Urges Lawmakers to Step Up Competition With China in Shipbuilding, Rare Earth Mining

Kurt Campbell, then U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, speaks at a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Dec. 13, 2012. Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell urged lawmakers during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to expand their efforts to counter the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on multiple fronts.

At the July 30 hearing, Campbell shared concerns across the spectrum of U.S.–China competition, from control over the rare earth minerals trade to China’s expanding defense industrial output. He called the disparity between U.S. and Chinese shipbuilding “deeply concerning.”

“We have to do better in this arena, or we will not be the great naval power that we need to be for the 21st century.”

The deputy secretary of state credited the United States with investing appropriately in ground forces and special operations capabilities during the Middle East-centric wars of the past two decades but said the United States now needs to shift its warfighting emphasis from those types of counter-insurgency operations back to conflicts between peer-like military powers.

“Now is the Navy and the Air Force’s time,” Campbell said. “They have to step up. They have to invest more. They have to be more innovative.

“They have to be more intrepid, and they’ve got to understand that the Indo-Pacific arena requires the most capable naval and advanced long-range air capabilities that the United States has ever needed before, and that’s where we have to put our focus.”

Beyond the military shipbuilding and aircraft production competition, Campbell urged lawmakers to take a closer look at how to outmatch the growing Chinese business, diplomatic, and military presence in new regions of the world. He said the United States has made progress in recent years to bolster its presence in the Indo-Pacific region surrounding China, but said Africa “is the place where we need to step up our game substantially.”

The Chinese military established a naval base in Djibouti in 2017, giving its sea forces a new base of support along Africa’s east coast and along the chokepoint of the Red Sea—a strategically critical route for maritime logistics. Foreign policy analysts are continuing to monitor for signs that the CCP will seal a deal to place another base somewhere along Africa’s west coast, bolstering the Chinese navy’s access to the Atlantic.

“We have to contest Chinese actions, not only in terms of their forward-basing strategy, but their desire to go after Africa’s rare earths that will be critical for our industrial and technological capabilities,” Campbell said.

Rare earth compounds are critical for high-tech computing and other electronic components. In 2022, China accounted for about 70 percent of global rare earth mining capacity, according to a U.S. Geological Survey assessment.