Because China has an obvious strategic interest in exploiting its dominance of a critical supply chain. The controls were introduced under its dual-use export r

Because China has an obvious strategic interest in exploiting its dominance of a critical supply chain. The controls were introduced under its dual-use export regime, giving China leverage in the already very public trade and technology confrontation with the West. None of that is evidence that China possesses secret knowledge of some imminent new war - as I stated, there's more than enough current wars. You have taken one of the known causes of rising tungsten prices, asked “why?”, and treated your preferred answer as though it had been demonstrated. A state using a strategic resource strategically is not a mysterious signal, it is policy happening in plain sight. There's far more luminous signals for any impending Chinese (or, indeed, other) militarism than tungsten.