U.S. sanctions on China, US companies | USA flight to Beijing winter Olympics | China Iran agreement

A bipartisan piece of legislation to be introduced in the US Senate would force defence contractors to stop buying rare earths from China by 2026 and use the Pentagon to create a permanent stockpile of the strategic minerals.
The bill, sponsored by Senators Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, and Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, is expected to be introduced on Friday, the Reuters news agency reported. It is the latest in a string of US legislation seeking to thwart China’s near-total control over the sector.
Rare earths are a group of 17 metals that, after processing, are used to make magnets found in electric vehicles, weaponry and electronics. While the United States created the industry in 1940's and US military scientists developed the most widely used type of rare-earth magnet, China has slowly grown to control nearly the entire sector during the past 30 years.
The United States has only one rare-earths mine and has no capacity to process rare-earth minerals. The US relies on China for about 80 percent of its rare-earths imports.
In December, China consolidated several of its key producers to create a behemoth that will strengthen its control over the global industry it has dominated for decades.
The new entity, China Rare-Earths Group, will speed the development of mines in the country’s south, state media reported.
“Ending American dependence on China for rare-earths extraction and processing is critical to building up the US defense and technology sectors,” Cotton told Reuters.

A broad crackdown on private enterprise, regulatory tightening, and uneasy U.S.-China relations have done little to discourage American companies from doing business in the world’s second largest economy.
In fact, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer says executives plan to double down on their investments.
“I talked to CEOs of Western companies literally every day, and I will tell you that on balance, the majority of them are planning on doing more business in China over the next 10 years, not less,” Bremmer told Yahoo Finance Live. “The reason for that is simple. It's because China is on track, still to be the world's largest economy by 2030. And corporations ultimately want to be where their markets are going to be.”
The sheer size of the Chinese market has long made it the most valuable asset for U.S. multinationals operating in the country. The International Monetary Fund estimates China will become the world’s largest economy in the early 2030s.

People trying to fly from the United States to China may soon be confronted with an unthinkable scenario: Starting next week, there are likely to be no commercial flights bound for the country as Beijing tries to keep coronavirus infections out ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Beginning January 19 and continuing for at least two weeks, all flights from the United States to China have either been canceled or are likely to be suspended because of Chinese aviation regulations, according to CNN Business research of government announcements and published flight schedules. As of Friday, only two flights still appeared eligible to operate for that period, one of them with United Airlines (UAL).
The Beijing Winter Games open on February 4, and participants are mostly taking special flights restricted to people with Olympics credentials as part of a strict bubble that authorities are implementing around the event.
Since June, the Civil Aviation Administration of China has applied a so-called "circuit-breaker" rule to international flights. That rule means that a flight is automatically suspended for two weeks if five or more passengers test positive upon landing in China. If 10 or more passengers test positive, the suspension period increases.
China has defended its "circuit-breaker" regulations as "an important step to reduce the risk of cross-border spread of the epidemic."
"The measures, which are open and fair, apply equally to both Chinese and foreign airlines," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in August. "For airlines that do not meet the conditions to trigger the circuit-breaker, China has never applied relevant measures on them."

China said Saturday it would begin implementing a strategic agreement with Iran, strengthening economic and political cooperation between the two countries as Beijing blasted Washington’s sanctions on Tehran.
China and Iran signed the agreement last year after years of talks, with the wide-ranging partnership set to span areas including energy, security, infrastructure and communications.
Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian announced the start of the partnership’s implementation at a meeting in east China’s Wuxi on Friday, Beijing’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

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