China’s rare earth miners rise and PCB booms in Thailand

September 4, 2025 17:42 JST

Hello, this is Kenji from Japan, where the unprecedentedly hot summer has not let us go yet, even as we enter September.

While Tokyo, where I now live, has had a record-breaking 28 days of “extremely high temperature,” defined as exceeding 35 C, as of Wednesday, my hometown of Nagoya, about 300km west of here, has already had 47 such days this year. On Sunday, the temperature there reached 40 C for only the second time since official records began in 1890.

Under the scorching heat, the British carrier strike group led by its flagship aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales made port calls in Yokosuka and Tokyo. Over the three weeks until Tuesday, the two G7 nations worked to deepen their geopolitical and defense ties. About 30 British contractors took advantage of this opportunity to display their military technology and seek new business deals in Japan.

The second such visit by a Royal Navy aircraft carrier also highlighted the two countries’ shared understanding of the ever-growing security threats posed by China, Russia and North Korea in the Indo-Pacific region.

Meanwhile, the top leaders of these three nations huddled together in Beijing on Wednesday, attending a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of victory against Japan. The historic gathering of the trio was preceded by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, bringing in over 20 foreign leaders to the port city of Tianjin, where I lived over 20 years ago.

Those leaders who gathered for the two events were mostly from authoritarian governments, while no leaders from a G7 nation, which tend to be on the side of liberal democracies, attended.

While the divide was apparent, India was a notable exception. Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to balance the two by showing up both in Tokyo, for a meeting with his Japanese counterpart Shigeru Ishiba, and in Tianjin, but did not attend China’s military parade, with its strong anti-Japanese message.

Instead Modi prioritized an event back home, Semicon India, a flagship event for promoting chips and related manufacturing in the country. He also showed his interest in the sector while he was in Japan, taking a side trip to Sendai with Ishiba to visit Tokyo Electron’s factory for producing chipmaking machines.

Back in black

China has been weaponizing the largest rare-earth reserves in the world in the ongoing trade war against U.S. President Donald Trump. Export restrictions on seven such strategic minerals in April have left some industrial production in the West in tatters, but they have boosted the bottom lines of Chinese miners by pushing up prices.

All major listed rare-earth miners have either returned to black or significantly increased their net profit for the first six months of the year, according to Nikkei Asia’s Kenji Kawase. China Rare Earth Resources and Technology, a core listed arm of a strategic state-owned conglomerate China Rare Earth Group, said its revenue surged by 62.4% on the year to 1.87 billion yuan ($262 million) and recorded a net profit of 161.70 million yuan, a sharp reversal from a net loss of 244.41 million yuan a year earlier.

China Northern Rare Earth (Group) High-Tech, the largest rare-earth miner in the country by volume, also benefited from higher prices. Its revenue soared by 45.2% on the year to 18.86 billion yuan, while net profit surged more than 20 times to 931.31 million yuan.

While the curbs have helped reverse the fortunes of state-owned miners this time around, they also highlighted once again how vulnerable those companies are to price volatility. As countries such as the U.S. and Australia rapidly establish their own rare-earth supply chains in repsonse to the threat from China, Rising Nonferrous Metals, another listed unit of China Rare Earth Group, warned in its risk factor disclosure that these moves abroad “could possibly weaken the global pricing power of the Chinese rare-earth industry.”

Pumped-up chips

China’s chipmakers are accelerating their efforts to triple the country’s artificial intelligence processor output next year. This move is a direct response to U.S. trade restrictions and aims to close the technology gap with global leaders, writes the Financial Times’s Zijing Wu.

Key to this push are new fabrication plants, including three dedicated to Huawei, which are set to significantly boost capacity. One fab is expected to start production as soon as the end of this year, with two more launching in 2026. This expansion, along with plans from China’s leading chipmaker SMIC to double its 7-nanometer chip capacity, is poised to reshape the domestic market.

This increased output is spurring a new ecosystem. Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is championing a new chip standard, encouraging domestic manufacturers to develop tailored processors. This collective effort could enable China to compete more effectively — even with less advanced hardware — with U.S. rivals in the race to develop AI.

PCB paradise

Thailand is rapidly emerging as a new production hub for printed circuit boards, or PCBs, as global demand for artificial intelligence servers and graphic cards accelerates. Nikkei Asia’s tech correspondents Lauly Li and Cheng Ting-Fang took a deep dive into the new industry landscape in the Southeast Asian country and reported on the tectonic shifts taking place in this niche tech sector, previously concentrated in Taiwan and China.

While lawmakers and others outside the industry may overlook the importance of PCBs in the tech manufacturing process, they are fundamental components, widely used in products ranging from phones and cars to data centers and aircraft.

The latest driver for this once-in-a-generation shift of the PCB supply chain to Thailand is AI, according to Nikkei’s interview with ten companies which made investments in the country. In less than three years, nearly 60 PCB makers from China and Taiwan have set up new manufacturing footprints in Thailand.

This rapid transformation was triggered by the live-fire military drills around Taiwan by China, following a visit by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the summer of 2022. Beijing’s violent reaction was a renewed wake-up call about the risks of over-reliance on Taiwan, giving a rise to the so-called Taiwan-plus-one production strategy.

Stablecoin synergy?

Eric Trump, the second son of U.S. President Donald Trump, is looking to take advantage of the accelerating growth in cryptocurrencies in Asia. In an exclusive interview with Nikkei’s Lorretta Chen, Cissy Zhou and Kensaku Ihara in Hong Kong, the younger Trump spoke of his ambition in “redefining what finance is in the entire world.”

His vehicle, World Liberty Financial — majority-owned by the Trump family — in April launched USD1, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin now available for trading on various crypto exchanges. He and company co-founder Zak Folkman believe Hong Kong’s latest move on stablecoins and China’s ambition for a potential yuan version to be complementary to their own efforts and an opportunity for a more efficient global finance, even floating the idea of a potential collaboration.

The big question is over possible conflicts of interest, as President Trump’s family company is directly involved, especially where he has been making public statements in support of cryptocurrencies. The younger Trump brushed those concerns off, saying, “I had nothing to do with the government. I’ve been in the private sector my entire life.”

Podcast: Tech Latest

Inside the e-wallet boom in the Philippines

Welcome to the Tech Latest podcast. Hosted by our tech coverage veterans, Katey Creel and Shotaro Tani, every Tuesday we deliver the hottest trends and news from the sector.

In this episode, Shotaro speaks with Manila correspondent Ramon Royandoyan about why more Filipinos are turning to e-wallets over traditional banks as their first step into financial services — and how this rise is prompting regulatory scrutiny over online gambling concerns.

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