Highlights

• China aggressively seeks to dominate global critical mineral supply chains across key sectors like clean energy and electronics.
• Beijing is acquiring mines worldwide, particularly in Africa and Latin America, to mitigate import dependencies.
• Western nations are developing counter-strategies to challenge China's strategic resource control and prevent technological dependence.

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A newly published study, Race for Critical Minerals: China’s Ambitions and Challenges, by Ankit Kumar and Professor Arun Vishwanathan of the Central University of Gujarat, offers a timely and incisive look at China’s aggressive efforts to consolidate global control over critical mineral supply chains.

Published in The Journal of Strategic Studies (Taylor & Francis Online), the study investigates how the global race for minerals essential to clean energy, advanced electronics, and defense is rapidly reshaping geopolitics. So what’s the author’s hypothesis? While China continues to dominate the rare earth sector, it faces mounting vulnerabilities due to its dependence on imported critical minerals — a weakness that could constrain its broader strategic ambitions.

Key Findings

• China seeks to replicate its dominance over rare earths across new critical minerals, particularly cobalt, lithium, and graphite.
• Beijing is aggressively acquiring mines worldwide — especially in Africa and Latin America — to mitigate its import dependence.
• The West, primarily the U.S., Europe, and key allies, is pushing back by building alternative supply chains and scrutinizing Chinese investments.
• Despite successes, China faces obstacles: resource nationalism in host countries, increasing global scrutiny, and the inherent difficulty of securing entire supply chains end-to-end.

Critical Analysis

While the study correctly identifies China's dominant position and outlines its vulnerabilities, it assumes that China’s challenges, such as resource nationalism or Western counter-efforts, will significantly blunt its ambitions. That assumption may be optimistic. China has consistently demonstrated patience, political leverage, and financial power in resource-rich but institutionally fragile regions, particularly Africa. Moreover, the West’s efforts to diversify supply chains remain largely reactive, fragmented, and slow compared to China's state-coordinated industrial strategy.

Another limitation is that the authors primarily focus on mining assets, while China's control extends much deeper into the midstream (processing) and downstream (manufacturing) layers, where Western capabilities are even weaker.

Conclusion and Implications

Kumar and Vishwanathan’s study serves as a sober reminder that the race for critical minerals is not just about mining — it's about end-to-end supply chain dominance. China is vulnerable, but it remains well-positioned to sustain and even deepen its strategic control unless Western governments and industries implement a truly coordinated, long-term industrial policy. For the United States, this means not only diversifying sourcing but aggressively investing in domestic processing, refining, and end-product manufacturing, or risk strategic dependency in the most critical industries of the 21st century.

Source

Ankit Kumar & Arun Vishwanathan, Race for Critical Minerals: China’s Ambitions and Challenges, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Taylor & Francis, DOI: 10.1080/01495933.2024.2445490 (opens in a new tab)