In Le Monde 02/14/2025 (This post is an expanded version of the column published in Le Monde)
Faced with Donald Trump’s ambitions to « take » the island of Greenland from Denmark, Xi Jinping’s China remains silent for the time being. However, it is pursuing a dual objective in the Arctic: one is economic, notably mining, the other is strategic: to spread its influence over Nuuk (capital of the Arctic island) to counter the influence of the United States over Taiwan, i.e. to transform the Arctic into a Cuba of the North.
Greenland appears to be the new global mining frontier, its mineral wealth of its more than 2 million km² seems immense in minerals: beryllium, cobalt, copper, diamonds, feldspar, gallium, hafnium, lithium, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, gold, PGM’s, strontium, tantalum, rare earths, titanium, uranium, vanadium, tungsten, … In addition, the real potential of the country remains unknown. 250 exploration companies armed with 700 permits are investigating less than 2% of the territory – on the 20% of accessible coastal areas – the remaining 80% under the ice contains other riches.
However, the viability of possible mines there depends on a balance between the richness of the deposits and future market conditions, a compromise between the 57,000 Greenlanders and their environment, but above all on the logistics of road construction and energy supplies.
Among the last seven Chinese Presidents and Prime Ministers, six received engineering training: mechanical engineering from 1993-2003 with President Jiang Zemin, and electrical engineering with Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, hydroelectric engineering from 2003-2012 with Hu Jintao while his Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was a geologist and from 2012 to today, Xi Jinping and Li Quiang know agriculture. It is easier to achieve the national objective when you understand the path, which is why this academic chronology corresponds to the country’s successful industrial stages: power plants, hydroelectricity, mining and energy geopolitics, process chemistry, agri-food… China has a powerful idea: sovereignty in all its forms is a public good that the market can neither guarantee nor provide.
Beijing’s strategy for gaining access to the mining industry, either as a direct operator or as a strategic shareholder, is a tried and tested one. It’s a strategy based on the excellence of its mining and metallurgy industries, developed by the politburo at the highest level of of the state, thanks in particular to Wen Jiabao. China’s successful strategy of economic intelligence has won it access to mining resources.
When Indonesia banned the raw export of mining products in 2014, only Beijing built factories there to transform the ore into battery-grade nickel. With Washington absent, Jakarta became the world’s leading producer.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Chinese China Molybdenum peacefully bought the world’s largest cobalt mine, also rich in copper, from the American Freeport-McMoran in 2016. Obama did not react.
In the midst of the Sino-US trade war at the end of 2018, the Canadian Potash sold 24% of the capital of the Chilean SQM, the world’s leading lithium producer, to the Chinese Tianqi, which became the world leader. Why did these 24% not pass into hands friendly to Washington?
Let’s go back to Greenland. In 1956, Denmark discovered the Kvanefjeld mine in Greenland in search of uranium. It tried to open a mine there without success until 1982. This project was converted into a rare earth mine in 2007 for the benefit of Greenland Minerals Ltd (GML) ((renamed Energy Transition Minerals on October 28, 2022). It received funding from the European Union. Responding to the national mining strategy, in 2016 the Chinese Shenghe Resources became a strategic shareholder of GML. On August 21, 2018, Shenghe entered into a non-binding memorandum of understanding with GML that encompassed the offtake of total output of rare earth elements from Kvanefjeld’s production. Then, in January 2019, Shenghe joined forces with China National Nuclear Corporation to refine rare earths, but also uranium needed for China’s thermonuclear power generation. The mine was scheduled to open shortly afterwards. China’s first mining access to Greenland was now in place.
But this first Chinese incursion into Greenland was stopped in 2021 by the Greenland government, which enacted a law banning any mining if the uranium content of the ore was greater than 100 ppm (parts per million). The average uranium content of Kvanefjeld, known since 1956, is 300 ppm. The case has since been before the courts.
Beijing has subsequently taken an interest in the Sarfartorq rare earth deposit. It belongs to the Canadian Neo Performance and is low in uranium. Appears in 2024 in the capital of one of its strategic shareholders, the Chinese JL Mag, world leader in permanent magnets. For Washington, this is a second Chinese access and another alert. Then, it was revealed that Beijing was targeting a third giant deposit of rare earths in Greenland, poor in uranium, near Kvanefjeld, that of Tanbreez.
In 2019, Donald Trump expressed his intention to buy Greenland for the first time. He announced two targets, they were two decoys: underwater hydrocarbons and rare earths. The first involves maritime environmental risks and the United States has so much oil and gas that it exports it. The second was logistically utopian, while a faster solution was to extract these lanthanides from the American subsoil: California, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Alaska.
Indeed, from 2020 to 2024, Washington did improved its situation. It investigated its subsoil and produced new US rare earths. For exemple, USA Rare Earths group became vertically integrated in three stages. Its Round Top lanthanide mine in Texas is rich in heavy rare earths, dysprosium and terbium, as well as gallium, beryllium and lithium. Its refinery in Colorado has just processed a test batch of Texas ore into rare earth oxides. Its Oklahoma metallurgical plant has produced permanent magnets for the first time. In Wyoming, less than 20% of the Halleck Creek rare earths deposit has been explored, but its resources already rank it 4th worldwide outside China. In California, the Mountain Pass mine is once again producing magnets. And finally, in 2024, Tanbreez passed in extremis into Washington’s orbit. What’s more, R&D made metals increasingly substitutable: some electric vehicle run on batteries without cobalt, nickel or lithium, and their electric motors are rare earths free.
Why, then, on January 7, 2025, did Donald Trump, back in power, reiterate his intention to oust Denmark by annexing Greenland? Because the issue is not geological, but geopolitical. In addition to the risks posed by Russia, China’s influence has confirmed to Washington that Greenland could become a threat, a northern Cuba and a counterweight to its influence over Taiwan. This is why Nuuk’s planned referendum on independence from Denmark, to coincide with its parliamentary elections next March, has become a national security issue.
For its part, Europe, which lacks minerals for its Green Deal, appears singularly out of the game in Greenland.
Denmark, whose giant island has been a « Kingdom community » since 1953, has no mines there. Under the influence of the « rare metals » hoax, the European Union listed critical metals, financed Kvanefjeld at a loss, without having anticipated that production might head for Beijing, and now the mine is at a standstill. In 2023, its Critical Metals Act legislated new industrial constraints on metals recycling, and its communication was intended to be performative, but was close to psittacism when it said: « The EU must strengthen its raw materials value chain, improve its ability to withstand supply chain disruptions, strengthen the adoption and deployment of advanced technologies, encourage the recovery of raw materials, etc. ». Without having made any progress on mines in Europe, even though deposits exist there, will the EU continue to finance Greenlandic exploration, to the benefit of mining companies listed in Australia or Canada, but which may have Chinese interests?
The whole confirms that rare earths are not rare and that “rare metals” do not exist.
Against this backdrop, Greenland remains first and foremost a geopolitical issue for the world’s major powers, and first and foremost for the United States and China, with a potential Chinese settlement north of Washington – a Cuba of the North – as a counterweight to US influence over Taiwan, and as a strategic node opening up north shipping routes between the Atlantic and Pacific.