Abstract

In October 2025, China's Ministry of Commerce issued a coordinated set of rare-earth export-control measures, constituting the most legally elaborate attempt by any state to govern a transnational production network through extraterritorial regulation. Notice 61 is especially striking. It extends Chinese jurisdiction to foreign-made products containing Chinese-origin rare-earth materials or technologies. This marks a regulatory move with no clear precedent. Existing scholarship on the weaponization of interdependence has explained how the United States projects coercive power through financial infrastructures (SWIFT, the dollar) and informational architectures (ICANN), where pre-existing institutional centrality is converted into regulatory power. This project asks how a state without pre-existing financial or informational infrastructure builds it network-based regulatory capacity through law to project material centrality. A parallel analysis of the U.S. semiconductor supply chain shows how the theory weaponized interdependence plays out where multiple technological centralities are distributed across different jurisdictions and no single state can control the whole supply chain.

About the speaker

Mengjie Xiang is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Regulation and Global Governance, College of Law, Policy, and Governance, the ANU.  Incorporating the insights of international relations to international law, her research focuses on the transition of international economic law in general and the emerging export control regimes in particular. Before entering academia, Mengjie worked for the public sector in China. Mengjie is also qualified to practice law in China, and she specializes in international law, land law, environmental law, and administrative litigation.

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