Every country wants green tech, electric cars, and cheap gadgets. But nearly all of this depends on minerals like lithium, nickel, copper. And China controls most of it. They buy mines everywhere, use government money to outbid others, and even let their companies lose money if it means locking up supplies for the future. They even run the factories that turn raw minerals into finished products
Fact: China processes 90%+ of the worlds rare earths (69% in mining production). For cobalt, lithium, copper, it is frequently more than half
Now Western countries (US, Europe, Australia, etc.) are worried. They talk about “friendship” and “safe supply chains”, but what are they really doing? Mostly, they throw money at big companies or make new trade groups, but still depend on China’s factories and technology
At the same time, local people in Africa, Asia, and South America are tired of outsiders (East or West) controlling their resources. Sometimes they just take over mines and switch partners
The world is rushing for more minerals, but we might just repeat old mistakes: dependency, pollution, debt, broken promises. Only this time, it’s not just oil, but everything from phone batteries to wind turbines
This gold rush has been going forever. Where there's value there are people mining it. The difference with China is whatever they do, they do it efficiently and in large scale. It's not that other countries doesn't have natural resources to produce solar panels yet over 70% of solar panels in the world is produced in China and no its not due to cheap labour cost. Labour cost in China is much higher than most of the Asian countries but they excel in automation and are efficient.
This links to the involvement of government, even though the government of China is not democratically elected, it keeps its national interest and interest of people on the center. While say for Asian and African democracy where they have legit votes but the whole of society and the government are corrupt and they spend the money and resources to win next elections rather than improving the life of people. There is democracy but its promotes and protects corruption.