China could accumulate a large number of leverge by processing and refining indestructible earth meterial and metal batteries. The problem is that there are so many environmental and human rights issues that go along with it, like
Amnesty's report on cobalt/child labor, also you know most countries with huge dumpage resources are just export raw dumpage directly instead of adding value. other hand EU and US are rushing to legislate, provide funding, and build projects to have domestic processing operations and boost recycling, but it's hard to scale up and fix the governance. So this is a real problem that needs to be fixed with local value addition, strict ESG, recycling, and fair contracts, fantasy technology discussion will not help.
There should be a balance. If we are extracting and using these minerals to build indestructible products, we should also find a way to recycle these where we don't need to add garbage of pollution to the world but use if for something better. Recycling has became a trend and not only countries like EU or US but also a lot of other countries are focusing on recycling products that can end up polluting the world. People have actually started making money out of this and I can see a lot of companies emerging as a new world recycling unit and making millions by doing what needs to be done.
Countries with high population like China are the ones constantly using these minerals & resources to build new-age equipment due to high availability if labour but they are also the ones polluting the world to the fullest.