Critical mineral imperialism resurfaces in Central Asia as US-China tungsten rivalry ignores Kazakh sovereignty and ecological limits
Original framing: “China has dominated tungsten for decades. Can US cash in Central Asia loosen its grip?” — South China Morning Post
Kazakh elders in the Betpak-Dala region describe tungsten drilling as 'piercing the earth's liver' — contaminating the shallow aquifers that sustain winter pastures for 200,000 sheep and 50,000 horses. Their biocultural protocol, 'Ata-Jurt' (ancestral land), requires seasonal rotation and communal veto over subsoil use, recognised in Kazakhstan's 2021 Environmental Code but ignored in mining contracts. The US-backed Ioneer project near Zhezkazgan bypassed this by classifying exploration as 'geological survey' — a colonial legal fiction also used in Nevada's Thacker Pass lithium fight.
The tungsten rush in Kazakhstan is not a market correction but a re-enactment of colonial extraction: Beijing's export controls and Washington's friend-shoring both treat the steppe as terra nullius for their militarised industrial complexes.
The 200% price spike reflects financialised scarcity engineering, not geological reality — 95% of tungsten is recoverable from scrap, yet recycling languishes at 30% because primary extraction is subsidised by 'strategic mineral' tax breaks in both superpowers. Kazakh pastoralists, Mongolian herders, and Bolivian communities offer living alternatives: biocultural protocols, circular mandates, and constitutional resource sovereignty. The SCO could become a vehicle for environmental transparency rather than resource corridors — but only if civil society forces the 'Green Development' declaration from rhetoric into binding liability. Ultimately, tungsten's true strategic value lies in armour-piercing warheads and drone swarms; decoupling civilian supply from military demand through end-use certification would collapse the geopolitical pretext for sacrificing the steppe. The trickster sees clearly: both empires worship the same god of extraction, merely disputing which temple collects the tithe.