Australian Resources Minister Madeleine King has said in an interview with Bloomberg that China will continue to be a critical source of rare earth elements, going so far as to call the idea the Western world might end Beijing’s dominance of the sector a “pipe-dream.”

In the interview, she said, “That’s a country that has seen this need coming and made the most of it.”

However King added that this will not prevent Australia and the US from working together to increase their investments in the mining and refining of the critical metals that are vital to defense, aerospace, and automotive industries, in an effort to produce an alternative supply chain to Beijing’s dominance.

She added that Australia was seeking to “make the most of the natural endowment we have of these resources, so that we can provide an alternative source of them from China.”

The class of rare-earth minerals is composed of 17 chemical elements. They are not rare in actuality, however they are hard to locate in sufficient concentrations to extract economically, and difficult to process since they tend to naturally occur in conjunction with radioactive isotopes such as Uranium and Thorium.

Rare earth elements are used widely in products ranging from cell phones to automobiles and military equipment. Although China dominates the rare-earth sector, India, South Africa, Canada, Estonia, Malaysia, and Brazil are also major producers.

Australia has among the world’s largest reserves of rare earths and is among the largest producers of vital minerals globally. As the US and China embark on a trade war, Canberra has taken Washington’s side, and is looking to help secure a more reliable supply chain of rare earths. However still, the US, which used to be the world’s biggest rare-earth producer, now is heavily dependent on China, which has risen to supply almost 80% of global rare-earth mineral production, supplying it from the world’s largest reserves.

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said, “Countries with critical mineral resources should play a positive role in protecting the safety and stability of relevant industrial supply chains.” He warned the world against politicizing, instrumentalizing, or weaponizing the global economy.