Working to de-power China’s smart battery dominance

America remains perilously unaware as it approaches a catastrophic ambush—a savvy, ruthless strategy designed to eliminate credible competition in the critical energy and rare earth domain. Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL) is aggressively orchestrating a $5 billion+ initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong. Bolstered by powerful global financial syndicate, which includes Bank of America and JPMorgan, CATL is deliberately targeting the most influential, global investors, including America’s largest asset managers, BlackRock, Prudential, State Street, and Vanguard.

While Wall Street leaders claim prudent stewardship, Bank of America and JPMorgan are headlining the bookrunning of the offering for CATL—a Chinese company explicitly 1260H-listed by the Pentagon calling attention to their direct ties to China’s military-industrial complex—expected to be the largest Hong Kong listing since at least 2021. This isn’t merely bad optics; it’s strategic sabotage, endangering America’s national security.

Make no mistake: CATL is not just a battery company—it’s central to China’s global ambitions. With a dominant 38% share of the global electric vehicle battery market, supplying giants like Tesla, BMW, Ford, and Volkswagen, CATL anchors Beijing’s bid to dominate strategic technologies. At January’s World Economic Forum at Davos, CATL co-chair Pan Jian boasted of a new class of electric vehicles (EVs), “Electric Intelligent Vehicles” (EIVs)—cars equipped with CCP-backed surveillance technology, converting everyday vehicles into mobile intelligence assets to be dispersed across the globe. This is not speculation—it follows the CCP’s proven playbook, replicating Huawei’s telecom networks, ZPMC’s ship-to-shore, Port-based cranes, and TikTok’s data harvesting models.

Let this sink in: Bank of America—the very namesake of our nation—is actively providing financial and reputational cover for a firm that functions as a de facto extension of China’s military. A bank accused of systematically discriminating against American conservative and faith-based groups by fourteen state attorney generals and President Trump, who publicly excoriated CEO Brian Moynihan for politically motivated “debanking” of citizens at home, is actively facilitating China’s global ambitions abroad.

CATL: A Strategic Threat Far Worse than TikTok.

CATL represents a danger well beyond TikTok’s near-term data-harvesting concerns. While TikTok represents a near-term threat, it is in an industry notable for the fickleness of customers and rapid pace emergent platforms supplant laggards, while energy, battery and transportation technologies are deeply embedded in infrastructure with useful lives spanning decades. In fact, these strengths are so decisive that Beijing has structured its global ambitions on EV batteries, solar panels, and electric vehicles as cornerstones of its Belt and Road Initiative. According to the Rhodium Group, these same three segments accounted for 77% of Chinese foreign direct investment in 2024—of which, two of the three CATL is a leader—underscoring CATL’s central role as a strategic asset in Beijing’s goals of global dominance.

Yet beneath CATL’s EV battery veneer lies a deeper, more sinister strategic geopolitical calculus: reinforcing China’s near-total monopoly over rare earth minerals and critical materials that power nearly all semiconductor and advanced technologies. “China accounts for approximately 69% of global rare earth ore production and processes about 90% of rare earth minerals globally,” according to Polytechnique Insights. Make no mistake, CATL’s true geopolitical threat is not simply batteries; CATL is poised to be a rare earth mineral juggernaut. This is not a battery fight, it is a rare earth mineral war.

China controls 90% of permanent magnet manufacturing, it refines 98% of the world’s gallium, produces 99% of its terbium, and dominates 85% of global battery production. These are not abstract numbers—they represent a strategic chokehold on the materials that power commercial electronic guidance systems, electric vehicles, semiconductors, and next-generation energy solutions. And every piece of military hardware and advanced technology relies on these minerals, just as China restricted exports of the vast majority of such elements, publicly revealing a pillar of their economic statecraft strategy decades in the making.

In an era of electronics, control of rare earth and critical minerals is the kingmaker.

The threat is most clearly displayed by a simple categorical listing of the most critical minerals:

For critical minerals like Neodymium (precision-guided missiles), Gallium (semiconductors), Terbium (sonar), and Graphene (advanced sensors), China’s dominance approaches absolute—between 95% and 99%. As illustrated, reconstituting American capacity would require billions of dollars for each mineral and, for the vast majority of minerals, five to ten years to reconstitute a competitive balance—with some rare minerals having estimates of a decade and a half, time the U.S. simply does not have.[1]

These minerals underpin every advanced American weapons system, from F-35 fighters and submarines to guided missiles and drones. Wall Street’s underwriting of CATL’s IPO further cements China’s chokehold, allowing Beijing to weaponize American dependency.

Intellectual Property Theft: China’s Longstanding Playbook.

China has spent decades infiltrating American artificial intelligence labs, quantum computing firms, and advanced materials research centers—stealing $400-600 billion annually in intellectual property (IP). CATL’s IPO prospectus claims 40,000 filed and secured patents, dubious marketing already being debunked, evincing a more surreptitious, deeper question of the strategic use of China’s patent office in strategic IP warfare undermining and chilling the global trademark and patent field. Together with IP theft and forced coercion of companies, the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) perpetuates the charade of China as a “developing country,” a designation that permits favorable exemptions, waivers, and concessions benefiting China. As the think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) notes, “China’s state-supported technology champions frequently benefit from stolen or unfairly appropriated intellectual property, directly undermining U.S. innovation.” By underwriting CATL’s IPO, Wall Street is indirectly legitimizing the industrial-scale theft of U.S. intellectual property and ruse of accountability under the WTO.

The CCP’s “Golden Share” Racket.

Perhaps even more reprehensible, this IPO directly benefits the Chinese Communist Party.

Beijing routinely employs a tactic known as the “Golden Share”—where a small government stake (often just 1%) grants the CCP outsized control over corporate decision-making. And with more than 12% ownership through state-owned entities, this IPO will massively inflate the value of their holdings, handing Beijing billions in fresh capital to fuel its military and industrial ambitions.

Rare Earths Rare Earth Dominance: China’s Hidden Weapon.

Control of rare earth and critical minerals is the decisive geopolitical lever and CATL is the vehicle of China’s broad ambitions which, as Chairman Jian noted, CATL has found a way to combine a range of rare earth-based technologies into EIV consumer sales. The Select Committee on the CCP further highlights ethical concerns, noting CATL’s supply chain has “indisputable evidence” of ties to forced labor in Xinjiang.

This IPO will enable CATL to penetrate European markets aggressively (Germany, Hungary, Spain), undermining American competitiveness and solidifying China’s global technological hegemony. It also provides a convenient loophole for U.S. investors who, due to restrictive mandates, may not be able to directly invest in mainland China but have greater discretion to channel funding through the Hong Kong market.

This IPO represents a strategic catastrophe. It enables China’s geopolitical ascent, legitimizes corporate espionage, and compromises America’s technological edge. By backing CATL’s IPO, Bank of America and JPMorgan implicitly legitimize industrial-scale IP theft, rewarding China’s illicit behavior and empowering Beijing at America’s expense. America’s banks must renounce their roles in any fundraising by CATL.

America Must Act—Decisively.

This moment demands clarity and leadership from both the private and public sectors.

Financial institutions must:

• Withdraw from CATL’s IPO and refrain from engaging with entities flagged as national security threats.
• Reassess risk frameworks to prioritize long-term national interest over short-term gain.

Government agencies must:

• Move CATL from the Pentagon’s 1260H list to the Treasury Department’s OFAC sanctions list, which would impose binding restrictions.
• Harmonize the regulatory stance across Treasury, Commerce, and Defense to prevent CCP-linked companies from accessing U.S. capital and sensitive technologies.

The stakes could not be clearer.

Bank of America’s CEO Brian Moynihan, who already faces a legacy most notable for excessive caution and lagging shareholder performance, is poised to be inextricably linked to overseeing a collaboration with America’s avowed enemy, further tarnishing an iconic banking brand. Mr. Moynihan faces a decisive moment, one that will define not only his leadership and Bank of America’s legacy but also America’s role in the world.

The banks’ actions will have far-reaching consequences, not just for the banks’ shareholders, but for every American who still believes in the values of freedom, security, and sovereignty. Investment banks, especially Bank of America, must choose. Do these banks serve America’s long-term prosperity, or merely eager, unprincipled mercenaries acting as accomplices in China’s strategic campaign to supplant our nation?

America deserves—and demands—an answer.

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Andrew King is GP at Bastille Ventures, investing in critical technology furthering national security, and founder of the bipartisan nonprofit, Future Union, working with the private sector to combat state espionage, and advises Congress, the Select Committee on China, Dept. of Treasury, Dept. of Commerce, and White House. Formerly he was the general counsel of the Dallas Stars NHL team and corporate lawyer at Goodwin Procter and investment banker at JPMorgan.