By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Part 11: An old order gives way to a new one, reshaping global geopolitics

I don’t have to mince words – I find the Project Silica led by the United States a bit laid back a response to China’s tit-for tat for Donald Trump’s delusional trade war escalation, a serious threat to Philippine sovereignty and neutrality, and a sitting duck for opportunistic threats by any potential enemy.

Yes, lest we forget, it was the American president that upped the ante on China, as for months, the two countries have engaged in a counter-productive trade war.

So, when US ramped up restrictions on the export of advanced chips to China, which affects the country’s ability to develop advanced weapons systems and artificial intelligence, a day after, China banned the export of rare but critical earth minerals used in the manufacture of important semiconductors to the US, in a strategic move in an ongoing tech war between the two superpowers.

Shola Lawal, writing for Al Jazeera, said “The US hopes to cripple China’s military and artificial intelligence (AI) advances as well as hamper its ambitions to become a global leader in clean energy and other technologies. The trade war is affecting global supply chains for chip and semiconductor manufacturers and pushing prices up.”

Genesis

It should be remembered that US trade and diplomatic relations with China under President Joe Biden have declined to their lowest point in recent years, largely because of disputes about technology; China’s military growth; human rights record; what the US calls China’s aggressive actions, such as engaging in military drills, among several other issues.

Trump also takes a hawkish stance towards China and has promised to impose even heavier sanctions on Beijing as well as a whopping 60% tariff on all Chinese goods. The US did not just expand export restriction on chip-making equipment going to China but sanctioned scores of Chinese companies.

Affected were China-bound shipments of high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which are essential for high-end applications, including AI training; 24 additional chipmaking tools and three software tools; and chipmaking equipment made in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia.

Washington’s ban also added 140 companies to its “entity list” of firms banned from trade with US companies and firms from nations allied with the US. The affected firms are either Chinese-based or Chinese-owned businesses in Japan, South Korea and Singapore. The Shenyang-based chip-producing firm Piotech and SiCarrier, which works closely with Huawei, a Chinese tech conglomerate, are among the newly sanctioned companies.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce retaliated by banning exports of key minerals like gallium, germanium and antimony to the US. These are important for manufacturing semiconductors, military equipment and for general industrial use.

The move is a broadening of restrictions already in place. In July 2023, China introduced a requirement for exporters to apply for special licenses to export gallium and germanium to the US. By October, Beijing also tightly regulated sales of graphite products, which are required to produce car batteries.

Super-hard materials, such as lab-grown diamonds and other synthetic materials that are used industrially, are also on China’s succeeding ban list. New rules now also require exporters to disclose who the end users of their products are to enable Beijing to identify connections with US firms.

“I want to reiterate that China firmly opposes the US overstretching the concept of national security, abuse of export control measures and illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction against Chinese companies,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lin Jian told media.

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers bolstered this position saying “the US’ behavior violates the laws of the market and the principle of fair competition, undermines the international economic and trade order, disrupts the stability of the global industrial chain, and ultimately harms the interests of all countries”.

Enter Pax Silica

As a counterpoise to China, the United States has created Pax Silica, a new strategic initiative aimed at building a secure and innovation-driven silicon supply chain by deepening cooperation with selected ‘trusted allies’ to counter China.

The term ‘Pax Silica’ comes from the Latin term pax which means peace, stability and long-term prosperity, while silica refers to the compound refined into silicon, a chemical element key to the computer chips that enable AI, according to the State Department.

The initiative aims to reduce coercive dependencies, protect the materials and capabilities foundational to artificial intelligence (AI), and ensure aligned nations can develop and deploy transformative technologies at scale, according to the State Department.

Launched in December 2025, the members today are Japan, South Korea, Australia, Finland, India, Israel, Qatar, Singapore, Sweden, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, the United States and the Philippines.

Birth pains

The Philippines became the 13^th  country to officially signed up for the initiative but the fact that third tiered Trade Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo and State Undersecretary Jacob Helberg inked the document, hints at a lack of seriousness and the prospect of a future disavowal.

According to the State Department under this framework, the two countries will establish a 4,000-acre industrial hub on the island of Luzon to “serve as a staging point for a purpose-built platform for allied manufacturing.”

The Diplomat, however, said that this announcement, “which is peppered with opaque corporate jargon, doesn’t provide a lot of clarity on key details.

With the launch of this industrial hub, the Philippines, which has significant reserves of nickel, copper, chromite and cobalt, is now being brought into the fold. The hub is expected to produce semiconductors and electronics, but securing access to critical minerals is an important part of the underlying logic.

The prestigious online magazine anticipates three roadblocks., especially related to governance and shared objectives and interests.

First, the hub will have diplomatic immunity and operate under US common law, the first such arrangement in the world. Providing diplomatic immunity to foreign companies would not only be highly unusual but also likely be very unpopular in the Philippines. It’s not clear that Philippine law even allows for this.

Second, how would this deal within Pax Silica, benefit the national interests of partner countries? It’s obvious that the U.S. hopes to get access to critical minerals and “production for inputs vital to U.S. supply chains,” which will in turn reduce reliance on China. But it’s less clear what the Philippines gets.

Third, is it just investment and job creation? That might be enough to sell the deal, but what about other considerations such as technology transfer, research and development and building-up skills? Based on the information that has been publicly disclosed, it is not yet transparent.

It will strengthen the appeal of the Pax Silica if the U.S. can make it clear that this is a genuine partnership, that augurs long-term development for countries like the Philippines and are not just expected to provide access to critical minerals and inexpensive land and labor to produce “inputs vital to U.S. supply chains.”

US broken promises

Not only is the United States way behind its commitments to the Philippines since Joe Biden started drumming up its “iron-clad commitment” since President Bongbong Marcos favored the Americans with four additional sites under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. With half-a million US dollars unaccounted for since 2023, Pete Hegseth announced that Donald Trump increased this by another billion, which only trebled the balance receivable to a total of $1.5 billion.

To cancel railway projects China committed during the previous administration of President Duterte, on April 2024, The Philippines, Japan, and the US announced the launch of the Luzon Economic Corridor, touted as the first Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment corridor in the Indo-Pacific, which aims to accelerate coordinated investments in high-impact infrastructure projects in Subic Bay.

More than a year with no progress seen, another press release was issued on June 2025, announcing that the U.S. Trade and Development Agency is funding for “technical assistance” to develop the Subic-Clark-Manila-Batangas (SCMB) Railway, a proposed 132-mile line connecting three of the Philippines’ most critical ports.

Since Secretary Vince Dizon was transferred thereafter to the Department of Public Works and Highways, following the Php 1.9 trillion floor control scam, the economic corridor and the SCMB railway, remain to be pies in the sky.

In fact, most of the listings are hot air, involving primarily approved investment pledges, which are future projects rather than immediate cash inflows and job opportunities. And with the unprecedented corruption scandals, investors have either postponed plans or relocated them elsewhere in the ASEAN region.

The Philippines has long known the US as unreliable partners.

Forty-four years from its signing in 1947 a Military Bases Agreement with the US, did not factor concomitant economic boost to Clark and Subic. Instead, it brought social issues such as prostitution, human rights abuses, even murder. Today, barely 30 years after the Americans left in 1991, Clark and Subic have become flagship free ports as a combined hub for 300,000 workers sans the US.

A Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was announced by Barack Obama in November 2009 as a counterpoise to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Negotiations began in 2008, and an agreement among 12 countries was signed on February 4, 2016.

Barack Obama’s administration pursued the TPP as a strategic pivot to Asia, as a significant trade agreement aimed at enhancing trade and investment among Pacific Rim countries with the goal of boosting U.S. economic growth, supporting American jobs, and promoting innovation. The agreement was set to cover 40 percent of the global economy and was expected to lower trade barriers, increase exports, and create new jobs.

But before the Philippines could even join the partnership, Donald Trump withdrew the US from the TPP in 2017 leaving the remaining countries unable to forge ahead on their own.

New group bound to fail

I find the road ahead for Pax Silica rougher than its precedent failures in handling its military alliances in the past, the Luzon Economic Corridor and the Trans Pacific Partnership.

In recent years, the Diplomat said China has been more aggressive when it comes to economic engagement in Southeast Asia, building nickel smelters and solar panel factories in the region and drawing big economies like Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand into global supply chains anchored by Chinese technology and capital.

The premier international current-affairs magazine thumbed down Pax Silica as belated recognition that the U.S. needs to match these actions in some way if it wants to keep pace, and this deal with the Philippines is an early example of what we can expect such a pivot to look like.

Over the recent years, U.S. economic engagement has been defined mainly by punitive tariffs, erratic policy shifts, the strong-arming of allies into one-sided trade deals, and military adventurism in Ukraine and the Middle East, and driving up energy prices.

In the Philippines, Filipino scientists and patriotic coalitions, such as the Liga ng Agham para sa Bayan, oppose the initiative because it facilitates “resource plunder,” entrenches national dependence on foreign powers, and prioritizes US “war industry” needs over Philippine industrialization.

Whether the Pax Silica vision can be translated into actual strategic gains, and how the interests of allies are balanced with those of the United States, is highly doubtful.

As expected, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro sees resilience in the face of danger.

Conclusion

We will discuss more challenges ahead for Pax Silica in our next article.

But the more important consideration for now is not in the tech war itself, but for newfangled end products that will have economies of scale that markets can absorb.

The problem however is basic – the priority for the US is biased in favor of its military industrial complex to stilt oligopolies and salvage its declining hegemony, while China derives its increasing dominance in everyday consumerism.

China continued to dominate global trademark activity, with around 7.3 million applications filed or nearly half of the world’s total filings of roughly 15.2 million applications in 2024.

As of early 2026, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) market is experiencing a high-value resurgence, with roughly $124 billion in construction contracts and investments in the first half of 2025 alone, focusing on energy, real estate, and metals. It acts as a massive market for Chinese firms to export excess capacity and build infrastructure in over 150 countries, totaling over $1 trillion in commitments.

This is why Chinese analysts say that Pax Silica is unlikely to achieve its stated goal. Zhou Mi, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times said that the initiative reflects US’ desire to leverage the advantages of its “allies and partner” countries to bolster its own development by guiding these nations to align with US interests in trade, investment and industrial development, thereby safeguarding America’s capacity for innovation.

This would not translate into tangible corporate action, he said.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Guo Jiakun explained the reason: “All parties should adhere to the principles of a free market economy and fair competition working together to maintain the stability of the global supply chain.”

At the end of the day, what the world will support are products relevant to the peoples’ daily subsistence and at affordable costs. Pax or peace, becomes an oxymoron when technology is prepositioned for war purposes. 

Next: A Clinical Look at Rare Earth Production and Application

   

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