China’s multibillion-dollar minerals investment lifts foreign economies: report | South China Morning Post

China has committed more than US$120 billion in direct investment in overseas mining and mineral processing projects since 2023 – covering the likes of lithium and rare earth metals – with that spending boosting clean energy usage in developing countries, a think tank said on Wednesday.

It was helping to advance the “zero-emissions world economy” by offering mineral inputs for solar equipment, wind power, electric vehicles and industrial decarbonisation offshore, the Australian think tank Climate Energy Finance (CEF) said in a report titled “Raw Power”.

“China’s resources and cleantech OFDI (outbound foreign direct investment) together form a … global green industrial strategy of unprecedented scale and ambition that now reaches into every resource-rich region on earth and is helping to drive global energy transition,” it said.

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China’s huge domestic clean energy sector, built up over the past two decades, generated an estimated 15.4 trillion yuan in economic output last year, according to the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

About 90 per cent of global rare earth refining capacity, 90 per cent of the production of battery components that store and release energy and 60 per cent of lithium processing is in China, according to the CEF report, which was written by think tank director Tim Buckley and net-zero transformation analyst Matt Pollard.

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China is now fostering a “mutually beneficial model of resource and energy diplomacy” with a focus on developing countries, the report said. It suggested that the current model had replaced Beijing’s earlier Belt and Road Initiative investments in traditional power plants abroad.