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Certain elements of the conservative foreign policy world, especially in the US, never miss a chance to emphasize “the China threat”, almost as if they are uncomfortable living in a world without a concrete, traditional enemy to face off with (and write articles castigating). So when China radically revised its environmental regulations on the mining of rare earth metals last year, which also had the effect of driving prices sky high, the outcry over “economic warfare” and the need to “secure” our resource supply was predictable. But behind the bluster, do they have a point?

Rare earth metals, with names like Terbium, Erbium, and Rhenium, are by-products of base metals and an essential component of most high tech electronics, from consumer-grade mobile phone and sat nav to solar panels to fighter jets. Also, China currently produces 95% of the world’s supply of these metals. You can see where this is going; that’s a lot of power to have over production, especially of important equipment that powers military and security systems. With that kind of monopoly, China essentially has a stranglehold on key Western industries, and the ability to damage them (or make them pay a lot more) if they wanted.

This is what critics argue is going on with China’s new regulations, which impose export restrictions and very un-Chinese high environmental standards and have had the effect of driving rare earth metal prices up 40% or more. They decry a monopoly and say the Chinese government is simply trying to lure more foreign consumers of these metals to produce their goods directly in China. This certainly may all be true, and such a targeted action on the part of China’s regulators (there appears to be no overarching review of environmental practices in the works) lends credence to the idea that this is essentially economic aggression.

But this doesn’t change the fact that it is also, on the surface, a move towards environmental responsibility, something that Western governments and NGOs have been calling for for years. This is a chance to call China’s bluff: to engage them on environmental issues and praise their progress.

In a report presented to the US Congress this summer by the Center for a New American Security, it was made clear that the US and other industrialized Western countries will have to diversify their rare earth supply in the coming years anyway; an easy conclusion to see. It also noted that while China produces 95% of the current product, they actually only hold around one-third of the actual available rare earth deposits, and until this past decade, the US was a major miner of these metals. There are still vast domestic resources out there; the production has been undermined by the cheaper (and often extralegal) Chinese operations, but can and, the CNAS argues, should be reactivated. So it is both necessary and possible to move off this dependency: why not seize the moment now, when it can be paired with an engagement on another critical issue (and in the process, potentially thwart the very economic aggression that so many are convinced of)?

Where one engagement starts, others follow: actors need not agree on much or even be engaging for the same reasons for the dialogue to have an effect. In this case, resource scarcity and overarching environmental issues are something that will affect all countries and would best be dealt with by a global response; it is not unreasonable to assume that China and western nations may find they share more concerns than they realized. But where they might spend years otherwise engaged in trying to not give up relative economic advantages, opening a dialogue now might allow us to start early on tackling these issues.

So when you see someone calling for an aggressive stance against China, remember there are other options. This doesn't even require trust in China. It just needs the acceleration of a process that has to happen anyway and subtly wise politicking.

Jason Naselli is an editor at Atlantic Community.