Unconstrained by commercial concerns and motivated by one key dictum – ‘let’s do things differently from the West’ – the artists produced richly symbolic and deeply peculiar posters.

The move raised alarms in Japan, where the minerals have a high symbolic importance as key components in the manufacturing of electronics as well as hybrid-car batteries.

It may simply be China's turn to decide over the destiny of mankind, over geography, over value systems, over symbolic orders, over all the key concepts by which we organize our lives.