National Review: "China Just Had a ‘Sputnik Moment.’ This GOP Lawmaker Is Urging Americans to Recognize It"

Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar recently spoke with National Review in an interview about the committee’s work to combat reliance on Chinese critical minerals. The interview follows the committee's report, Predatory Pricing: How the Chinese Communist Party Manipulates Global Mineral Prices To Maintain Its Dominance and a subsequent hearingof the same name.

Excerpts from the article are below and the full interview can be read here.

China Just Had a ‘Sputnik Moment.’ This GOP Lawmaker Is Urging Americans to Recognize It

National Review

December 8, 2025

The U.S. recently experienced an inflection point in the great power competition against China — on the level of the launch of the Sputnik satellite during the Cold War — and most Americans are entirely unaware that it happened.

Representative John Moolenaar (R., Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, is setting out to change that, urging Americans to wake up to the threat of Chinese critical mineral domination, a threat that was recently made explicit when the Chinese Communist Party placed export controls on the vital materials that go into everything from electric vehicle batteries and phones to advance missile systems.

“I think China actually helped us when they put those restrictions on and basically fired that loaded gun at the American as well as the world economy. I’ve heard from different countries around the world who are concerned about this very thing. I think it was a wake up call, almost like when Sputnik was launched and people realized the Soviet Union is is trying to gain leverage in the space race,” Moolenaar told National Review last week in a wide-ranging interview at his congressional office.

…

True to his Michigan roots, Moolenaar is trying to remind people of the importance of a robust U.S. defense industrial base and the perpetual relevance of manufacturing to the broader U.S. economy.

“Well, it turns out, for our information society, you need a lot of manufacturing and so I do think there’s a strong connection there, especially when it comes to our defense industrial base, because it’s never been clear that we need a defense industrial base that does not rely on foreign entities of concern,” he said.

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The China Committee’s report also contains various recommendations for what the U.S. can do to reduce China’s advantage in critical minerals. Those policies include financing U.S. supply chain development, expediting permitting timelines, providing a critical minerals tax credit, and creating a strategic resources reserve.

When it comes to U.S. national-security, especially China’s mineral foothold, Moolenaar is willing to subordinate his free market principles to advance American industrial capacity, a common view among conservative China hawks.

“As it’s defense related, I think the government has always had a role of creating a demand signal, as you know, setting priorities, and we recognize you can’t have some of our military capabilities without access to these resources. It’s, you know, if we have our fighter jets dependent on Chinese raw materials, that’s a huge problem,” Moolenaar asserted.

“We’ve always had a policy to try and buy American for our military whenever possible. And this is a case where, when it comes to some of these rare earths and critical minerals, we do not have that capability, and unfortunately, are relying on our foremost adversary.”

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Domestically, Moolenaar emphasizes the need for bipartisan cooperation in Congress and across administrations to handle the China issue. He is hoping the 250th anniversary of the American founding next year will further inspire companies to take a longer term, patriotic outlook in how they handle doing business with China, especially with a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan on the horizon.

“A rising China, which at one point was viewed as a benign developing country, when you look at their military, their technological capabilities, their human rights abuses and their threats to the security in the region and around the world, we need to rethink that, because they’re ultimately trying to export their surveillance society and their leverage around the world, the critical minerals warning shot was a wake up call,” he stated.

“But there’s a lot more at stake, and my hope is that the private sector will see it’s in their long term interest to support the values of this country, the foundational values and not simply be drawn in by short term financial incentives.”