Recent global concerns over Chinas curtailing exports of rare earths, first to Japan and then elsewhere, have joined ongoing tension among several countries about currency values as signals of a continuing and larger conflict: the clash between the
Beijing Consensus and the Washington Consensus. The two approaches to managing, monitoring and/or supporting economies have come to loggerheads over fundamentals, namely the inherent conflict in the two models between markets and sovereignty. Neither of the two "religions" of open-market and managed-market economies is likely to budge, and so diplomacy for the purpose of acquiring leverage against each other has suddenly become critical in the Clash of Models.