China's battery manufacturing industry has surged ahead globally, and metallic lithium is an indispensable material. It is known as the "white oil" for electric vehicle power batteries, energy storage batteries and consumer electronics batteries. Among the various imported ores China needs as a manufacturing powerhouse, lithium ore is one of the few categories where Chinese miners have taken the lead in grasping the dominant power. It marks an inflection point cycle, the moment when Chinese miners are gradually regaining the initiative lost on a global scale, one step at a time.

The Unknown Game of Power

As an unremarkable small white metal, lithium was purely pushed to the pinnacle by China's national strength. Lithium had long been obscure, used in lubricating oil and medicines. During World War II, it was used as lubricating oil for tanks, and later as a medical sedative to treat depression. It was not until the rise of China's electric vehicles that the face of lithium metal was completely transformed, and so was the map of the world's mineral resource countries.

The usage volume of lithium is mainly converted by lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE). The global consumption of LCE reached 1.6 million tons in 2025, and it is projected to be 2 million tons in 2026. 70% of this consumption occurs in China, driven by the rapid development of two major pillars: automotive power batteries and energy storage batteries.

When people praise the dazzling achievements of China's "new three highlights" such as new energy vehicles and power batteries, they tend to overlook the value of Chinese mining companies that underpin these industries. Nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper provide enormous support to China's power battery and new energy vehicle sectors and have a profound impact on them. When global automancers were still unclear about the value of nickel, cobalt and lithium, Chinese mining companies were already scrambling to acquire mines around the world.

Lithium, nickel and cobalt are all indispensable elements for the cathode materials of ternary batteries, and they share a common characteristic: none of the world's traditional automotive giants were familiar with them until 2021. When the global lithium price soared 10 times in 2021, these traditional giants suddenly realized that the unassuming lithium was actually the "white oil" of the new energy industry.

Around 2017, Volkswagen (VW) began considering the production of electric vehicles and needed to lock in cobalt, an expensive raw material, upstream. Volkswagen summoned global cobalt traders such as Glencore and Huayou Cobalt to its headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany for negotiations. However, the business requirements put forward by Volkswagen's procurement officials stunned global cobalt traders. Adopting the usual party A attitude, Volkswagen demanded that global cobalt traders offer a "Volkswagen discount"—the larger the order volume, the lower the price. Moreover, it required locking in long-term supply at a fixed price.

It seemed that Volkswagen had no understanding of the operational mechanism of such mineral resources. Volkswagen was accustomed to the just-in-time (JIT) model of spare parts supply chains common in the automotive industry, regarding mineral miners as "small component manufacturers" that could be replaced at will.

However, the price of cobalt does not automatically come with a discount just because of large volume. Cobalt is mainly associated with copper, and sometimes with nickel as well. Expanding mine production capacity is not as simple as adding production lines; behind it are constraints from the geological exploration cycle and harsh physical environments. This is completely different from the economies of scale of factory production lines. In addition, the price of cobalt has always been highly volatile, and it is impossible to supply it at a fixed price for a long time.

The same goes for nickel, and lithium. Nickel, cobalt and lithium are not components in the traditional sense; they are mineral resources completely unfamiliar to Volkswagen. Automakers have long been well acquainted with the use of steel, aluminum plates and magnesium metals, and they understand the value of rare earths in electric motors. However, in the manufacturing process of electric vehicles, the three metals nickel, cobalt and lithium are basically a blank slate. Major global traditional automakers have no understanding of these matters. At that time, the global demand for cobalt was approximately 13 tons, and Glencore, which exclusively held a quarter of the world's cobalt production, uncompromisingly and directly rejected Volkswagen's request.

Traditional multinational automotive brand brands seem to lack a complete concept for building a brand-new electric vehicle (EV) supply chain. Only in China has the entire supply chain been launched simultaneously. Whether it is electric vehicles or batteries, whether it is positive and negative electrode materials, or upstream nickel, cobalt and lithium mines, the entire supply chain has created a resonance effect. A complete web of supply chains vibrates at the same time because they are locked onto the same target.

China became the first country in the world to efficiently operate the entire electric vehicle supply chain. This further stimulated the enthusiasm of Chinese nickel, cobalt and lithium miners and encouraged them to take bolder risks.

China seized the first-mover advantage in the global lithium mining sector within the global mineral landscape where it had few strengths.

Foresighted Exploration

The world's top six lithium miners are Chile's SQM, America's Albemarle, Jiangxi Ganfeng, Sichuan Tianqi, Britain's Rio Tinto, and Australia's Mineral Resources Company. Backed by the ambition to expand globally and the faith in lithium batteries, China's Tianqi and Ganfeng have strongly shaken the global lithium mining landscape.

Chinese mining miners had a prescient understanding of the value of lithium ore back then. In 2009, China's "100 Cities, 1,000 Vehicles" initiative for electric vehicles was launched without a clear target. The white lithium metal required for power batteries began to show a faint glimmer of promise. At that time, lithium cobalt oxide batteries were commonly used in smartphone batteries. However, people's focus was all on the expensive cobalt metal, and few paid attention to lithium. Although lithium's abundance on Earth is not particularly high, it is found everywhere, and prior to this, it had always been used in small quantities at low prices. Nevertheless, the advent of electric vehicles brought a dramatic shift in the demand for lithium.

A pure lithium metal weight of about 10 kilograms is used in a power battery, while only 10 grams are needed for a mobile phone. The lithium consumption of a car is equivalent to that of 10,000 mobile phones. As China's electric vehicles begin to accelerate, lithium mines are waving black-and-white flags at the farthest corners, and Chinese mining enterprises have keenly captured the potential of this white glimmer.

Going global to find lithium, Chinese mining enterprises have entered a global arena. The most representative ones are the "lithium industry giants" of the past: Sichuan-based Tianqi and Jiangxi-based Ganfeng. Today, Tianqi in Chengdu, Sichuan focuses on high-quality upstream mines and prioritizes lithium supply. Meanwhile, Ganfeng in Jiangxi has extended downstream to produce a variety of lithium products and even entered the battery manufacturing sector. Their biggest commonality, however, is that they started spinning the globe long ago, scouting for lithium deposits in every corner of the world.

Sichuan Tianqi has been cooperating with Chilean chemical company SQM since 2016. In Australia, it owns the world's highest-quality spodumene mine, the Greenbushes Mine. Jiangxi Ganfeng has a broad layout in Australia's Pilbara region, Argentina's brine salt lakes, and Mali in Africa.

However, Chinese miners have had a bumpy start. All mining sites are far away from human settlements. Ganfeng Lithium's salt lake project in Argentina is like mining ore on the moon. If Chinese companies don't take it on, there will probably be no other company capable of completing it. It is 80 kilometers from the nearest existing road, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest power grid, and at an altitude of nearly 4,000 meters. The oxygen content in the air is only about 60% of that at sea level. In this salt lake wilderness, 80 kilometers in all directions with no human habitation, the beautiful turquoise lake scenery is nothing but a desolate bitter place.

It takes the grit only the Chinese possess to pioneer the wild, untamed mountains and lakes. Only by enduring in solitude can we seize the future dominance in lithium mines.

Sichuan Tianqi, Ganfeng Lithium of Jiangxi and China Mineral Resources of Beijing have secured their spots among the world's top 10 lithium miners mainly by acquiring high-grade mines overseas. China Mineral Resources, a private enterprise whose name sounds like a state-owned one, has excellent lithium resources in Zimbabwe and Canada. Sichuan Shenxin Lithium Energy, on the other hand, has built mines both domestically and internationally. Shenxin Lithium Energy achieved an annual revenue of 5 billion RMB in 2025 and was once the lithium asset division of Shenton Mining. Among its self-owned mines, spodumene from Zimbabwe accounts for 75% of the total.

Due to the paragenesis phenomenon exhibited by many metals—for instance, the copper - cobalt paragenesis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or the lithium - cesium - tantalum paragenesis in the mines of Canada—Chinese mining companies have begun to adopt a diversified business model. Shenzhen Zhongjin Lingnan Nonfemet, whose core businesses are copper and zinc, also supplies cobalt and nickel. Every time Chinese mining companies develop an overseas mine, they keep expanding their reach. They often have a stronger sense of globalism. As they explore various regions across the globe and observe different geological features on the Earth's surface, each element in the periodic table of chemical elements transforms into a familiar commercial symbol.

There are also companies that can achieve excellent results solely relying on domestic lithium mines. Companies such as Salt Lake Potash Co., Ltd. and Zangge Mining rely purely on domestic salt lakes and can also break into the top ranks. Driven by the two leading giants, Sichuan Tianqi Lithium Industries, Inc. and Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium Co., Ltd., many lithium industry companies have emerged in Sichuan and Jiangxi provinces. Sichuan Yahua Group, originally engaged in explosives, also entered the lithium industry when China's electric vehicles started to take off. Jiangxi Yongxing Materials, on the other hand, can produce more than 60,000 tons of lithium carbonate by virtue of its unique lithium mica lithium extraction technology, securing a firm position in the market. Zhicun Lithium Industry, Jiangte Motor and Yichun Mining have all become part of the lithium merchant list by leveraging Jiangxi's lithium mica resources. Zijin Mining is rapidly emerging as a new dominant player in domestic lithium supply through the rapid development of salt lakes in Tibet and lithium mines in Hunan.

While Tianqi and Ganfeng scoured the globe for lithium mines, the much larger global mining giants all largely missed out on this lithium revolution.

The Giants' Collective Miscalculation

The steep curve of China's electric vehicle development has exceeded global expectations, and the lithium metal required for power batteries has naturally soared like a rocket. Few giants had paid any attention to it before this.

Before 2015, a ton of lithium carbonate cost only 30,000 yuan, and global demand was just over 100,000 tons. The lithium market was so small that it hardly served as a pillar in the strategic reports of large companies. After 2001, China drove the global "commodity super cycle". Bulk traders and mining companies all benefited greatly from the Chinese cycle: Glencore's coal and cobalt, Singapore's Trafigura's oil and copper, Australia's BHP Billiton and Brazil's Vale's iron ore. Even the four major grain traders, ABCD, gained huge profits in China. However, they all uniformly ignored a "minor metal" rising in China's domestic market.

For mining giants, lithium has never been on their radar. Commodity giants such as Glencore and Trafigura have all ignored its value. FMC Corporation, an American agricultural and chemical company that once owned LCA, the world's largest lithium mining company, spun it off as Livent and listed it in 2018, then completely sold off all its shares in 2019. At that time, it was just the eve of lithium prices starting to rise abnormally. Lithium prices were only 40,000 RMB per ton in 2018, but by 2022 they had approached 600,000 RMB per ton. FMC almost gave up on this huge lithium opportunity at the very moment before the lithium price boom. In 2025, FMC's revenue was 3.5 billion US dollars, while its market value at the beginning of 2026 was only 1.7 billion US dollars. In contrast, Albemarle, the largest lithium company, had a revenue of 5 billion US dollars and a market value of 18 billion US dollars in the same period. This dramatic result shows that the value of lithium is often hard to truly recognize.

Only the persistent Chinese lithium miners, who hold an unwavering belief in lithium ore, will remain unwaveringly bullish on it for good. They will seize every opportunity to acquire lithium mines.

Major mining giants are more concerned about resources like copper. It is copper and iron ore that can prop up the bulk commodities. Even if the global lithium demand is converted into lithium carbonate in 2026, the annual demand is less than 2 million tons. At a market price of 100,000 to 200,000 RMB per ton, it amounts to approximately 200 to 400 billion yuan. In contrast, the global demand for copper is nearly 30 million tons. At 100,000 RMB per ton, the market size reaches 3 trillion yuan, making the gap about 10 times. Mining giants such as BHP and Glencore are still determined to seek copper. For major mining companies, copper is the core priority. Copper resources are more critical and scarce, and the competition for copper pricing rights in the mining industry will become more intense in the future. Similarly, the global demand for iron ore is at the level of 2.5 billion tons, and for electrolytic aluminum it is around 75 million tons. These are the true bulk commodities, while lithium ore can at most be regarded as a "medium-sized sector".

The lithium industry has also become increasingly difficult to manage today. After lithium carbonate hit a high of nearly 600,000 RMB per ton in 2022, the lithium market has grown substantially. Small enterprises that were once negligible in the eyes of giants, such as Albemarle of the United States, SQM of Chile, Tianqi of Sichuan, Ganfeng of Jiangxi, and Pilbara of Australia, have now grown into the backbone of the industry. Eighty percent of Albemarle's revenue in 2025 came from lithium mining income, about 50 billion yuan. Tianqi Lithium's revenue in 2025 was 30 billion yuan. Although the revenue of these enterprises is still at the 10 billion yuan level, the veins of these businesses are intricate. They are intertwined with uninhabited wildernesss, fluctuating government relations, hard-to-manage local communities, and the overwhelming single major channel of China. Any giant that does not have a lithium mine foundation and chooses to enter the market at this time will face an incalculable cost.

This also makes lithium ore accidentally a "fish that slipped through the net" for mining giants. The value discovery, mineral right control and exploration of lithium were almost all led by Chinese enterprises at the earliest. In the extremely uncertain mineral cycle, Chinese lithium ore miners grabbed an A-card for China's industry in advance.

This is the most unexpected move in the global mineral market landscape.

The only mining giant with unwavering confidence in lithium mines is Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto once aimed to secure Serbia's lithium mines but ultimately couldn't resist the impact of local nationalism. This is a risk that mining companies inevitably face globally. The competition in the global mining industry is fraught with too much uncertainty. Yet few mining giants have dared to take the plunge and enter the lithium sector halfway like Rio Tinto. In 2025, it invested 6.7 billion US dollars to acquire Arcadium Lithium, instantly ranking among the world's top three in lithium resource supply. Arcadium was simply like a little girl picking mushrooms—after gathering all the mushrooms on the mountain, she handed her basket over to a big buyer.

Arcadium is a mixed-race person with roots in both the Americas and Australia. These are the independent stories of two continents that are finally woven into a single main thread. LCA, the largest lithium mining company in the United States, was acquired by agricultural and chemical company FMC in 1985. To focus on its core agricultural and chemical business, FMC spun off its lithium division in 2018 and established a new company called Livent. At one point, Livent ranked among the world's top five lithium companies, alongside Albemarle Corporation of the United States and SQM of Chile.

In another storyline, two Australian lithium companies merged in 2021 to form Allkem Lithium Australia. Corporate mergers have begun, which is the most direct response to the soaring lithium prices. Since the potential of the lithium market has been expanded, capital mergers and acquisitions will go round and round.

In 2024, the jaguar and the Australian kangaroo met. Livent merged with Allkem to become Arcadium. This means the situation of specialized division in the lithium ore industry is being broken. Allkem owns upstream lithium ore, while Livent masters downstream high-end lithium salt processing technology. The two no longer need to be separated, and vertical integration is obviously more conducive to quickly realizing the value of lithium.

In this regard, Chinese lithium miners are already well-versed in this approach and have been playing this game all along.

Frequent mergers and acquisitions often mean a turbulent and unstable landscape. The bubble surging with capital has drawn close attention from major mining companies, and the market has begun to reshuffle rapidly. By 2025, Rio Tinto Group announced the acquisition of Arcadium for $6.7 billion and renamed it Rio Tinto Lithium. The arduous shifts and consolidations of small and medium-sized players were all for the big players to take them over in one go. This global giant in iron ore and copper ore thus became the world's third-largest lithium producer in one fell swoop.

Finally, lithium has become a strategic pillar for major miners.

Everywhere is dynamic warfare

On the global mineral map, Chinese mining companies are always engaged in dynamic games. On the chessboard of mineral resources, there are too many factors that can affect the trend of the situation. The positions of the pieces and the players themselves seem uncertain.

Sichuan Tianqi Lithium Industries seemingly was "stabbed in the back" by Chilean SQM during the latter's resource nationalization process at the SQM salt lithium mine. In the course of the Chilean government's nationalization of the SQM lithium mine, SQM "shook off" its major shareholder Tianqi and compromised with the Chilean government. In 2026, the Chilean court also issued a ruling unfavorable to Tianqi.

Tianqi invested $4 billion in 2018 to become SQM's second-largest shareholder. SQM's biggest asset is the Atacama Salt Lake, the world's lithium resource with the lowest production costs.

In fact, such equity acquisitions inherently carry certain time-sensitive risks. The mining rights of the Atacama Salt Flat will expire in 2030, and their renewal requires fresh negotiations with the Chilean government. In 2023, however, Chile's left-wing government demanded that SQM establish a joint venture with a Chilean state-owned company to operate its lithium business, with the latter taking most of the profits. In the end, SQM surrendered control of the new company in exchange for a 30-year extension of its mining license. From SQM's perspective, between "being completely squeezed out" and "paying high profit shares in return for 30 years of operational rights in the future," it chose the latter. Tianqi, as the major shareholder, suffered a huge loss of dividend rights. The existing global layouts of Chinese mining companies are facing enormous risks under the impact of fierce nationalism.

Both SQM and the Chilean government have their own business considerations. From the Chilean government's perspective, they hope to sell the country's resources at a better price. Against the backdrop of the current high certainty of global lithium demand, any government that holds lithium resources will try every means to keep them firmly in its own hands. This is true of Argentina, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria. In such a geographically fragmented world with sharp global geopolitics, it is difficult for a company's written agreements to be permanently guaranteed in their original form.

Even so, Tianqi Lithium still maintains the priority purchasing rights for lithium mines. Considering that 70% of the world's lithium consumption is in China, there remains an unpredictable contest in the future competition between resource-rich countries and producing countries.

However, the real interest of Tianqi Lithium lies in the Greenbushes Mine in Australia.

The Greenbushes Mine in Western Australia is the king of natural lithium mines. It has the highest-grade ore among the world's hard rock lithium mines with low development costs. The cost of producing lithium carbonate from the ore here is approximately US$5,000 per ton, which is the global cost floor. In contrast, the cost of producing lithium carbonate from the spodumene of the Lijiagou Mine in Sichuan is around US$7,000 per ton. If the price of lithium carbonate falls below 80,000 Chinese RMB per ton, it may be difficult to properly start the operation of the Lijiagou ore mine. The price trend of lithium carbonate is the force that determines whether the ore mines are open or closed.

The Greenbushes Mine is naturally a fertile land. And global mining companies have long formed an alliance here to defend and advance their interests. The biggest unwritten rule in the mining industry is that allies join forces to share profits. Three enterprises—Tianqi Lithium, Australia's local resources giant IGO, and the American company Albemarle—dominate this abundant mineral deposit. It may seem that Chinese companies cannot have exclusive control, but this is actually the greatest form of protection. Nearly half of the ore produced at the Greenbushes Mine each year is directly supplied to Tianqi at an agreed price. This provides Tianqi with an extremely stable and low-cost supply of high-quality raw ore.

To achieve this kind of security, Tianqi Lithium has demonstrated how Chinese enterprises can skillfully maneuver and build effective alliances despite being at a disadvantage in terms of capital and geopolitics.

Starting in 2014, Tianqi demonstrated an amazing strategic maneuver. Amid a cash crunch, Tianqi Lithium took the lead to acquire Talison, the original owner of this lithium mine. It can be said that when no one else in the world was paying attention, Tianqi placed a solo bet and seized the initiative. However, such an acquisition was not without risks. Immediately after the acquisition was completed, Tianqi brought in Albemarle, the largest lithium company in the United States, allowing the latter to acquire a 49% stake. This not only alleviated the financial pressure but also put on the protective coat of a global giant. In 2018, Tianqi once again crossed the ocean to set foot in SQM in Chile.

These two time points were both pivotal moments when China's electric vehicles triggered a global mineral upheaval. Someone always smelled the first opportunity in the market on the curve that was neither moving nor stationary. Chinese mining miners saw the glimmering spot of the curve's inflection point earlier than any other group, including automakers.

2015 marked the year of China's electric vehicles, and Tianqi Lithium had just completed its full acquisition of Talison Lithium Mine. Meanwhile, 2018 was the first time the price of lithium carbonate broke away from the long-term low and stable trend and began to rise. Tianqi Lithium made another major move by acquiring equity stakes in SQM of Chile. There has never been a shortage of lithium mines globally; only the scale and speed of China's manufacturing can drive price fluctuations in the lithium market. China's manufacturing supply chain, like a fizzling fuse, has drawn global attention at a rapid pace, ultimately focusing on the mines. The source of the supply chain is nothing but mines.

Chinese mining companies cannot always stand alone in global operations; they need to see through the situation and understand their own limitations. In 2021, Tianqi Lithium began to bring in IGO, an Australian mining giant, to form a joint venture to restructure its existing 51% stake. Through a series of dazzling maneuvers, Tianqi Lithium has shown that Chinese mining companies need to pursue profit maximization rather than being fixated on stake maximization. Stake maximization is extremely hard to hold onto overseas. In Australia's spodumene sector, a classic "three-way alliance" eventually took shape. Multinational corporations from China, Australia, and the United States have established the operational pattern of spodumene mines through interlocking shareholding relationships. Under such a triangular structure, Tianqi has secured sufficient interim guarantees for spodumene supply.

The global campaigns of Chinese mining companies have always been a grand tale of power struggles beneath the surface. What appears calm on the surface is always accompanied by undercurrents beneath the water. In this vast "lake," silent and mysterious hunters lurk—local mining firms, larger covetous contenders, major commodity traders, and ambitious politicians with government backing. They remain unruffled in normal times, and commercial rules proceed smoothly within the lines and margins of written contracts.

However, when the intentions beneath the surface of the "big crocodile lake" become clear, huge waves instantly surge above the lake. Rules can easily become outdated menus, and the ownership of mines can change. For Chinese mining companies, the most important survival wisdom is to form resource alliances. Chinese mining companies have only one broad principle of wisdom to rely on: "Do not be greedy, coexist; do not be resentful, stay latent for the long term." If an enterprise becomes too large and tries to monopolize everything, it will inevitably, after enjoying a moment of glory, become the mantis in the eyes of the sudden yellow sparrow.

No one can walk a long road alone. Cross-locking with numerous multinational corporations, bundling interests and turning others' strength against their enemies may be the best way to protect China's overseas assets.

Activate the Dormant U.S. Mining Industry

The U.S. mining industry has long been a moribund sector. This is the result of a gradual decline that has spanned six decades. Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, North Carolina became the world's largest lithium-producing region. The predecessors of Albemarle and Rio Tinto Lithium both operated massive open-pit lithium mines here. When Sony began commercializing lithium batteries in 1991, lithium ore was still available here. In 1999, Sony launched polymer soft-pack lithium batteries. The lithium used in Sony's cameras also came from this North Carolina mine. That same year, ATL was founded in Shenzhen and introduced polymer batteries, which later grew into CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited), a global battery giant. However, at that time, the booming development of these small batteries for mobile phones did not attract people's attention to lithium ore.

When China had just started pushing electric vehicles onto the track and making headway, high-capacity batteries meant nothing to the lithium producers back then. The lithium market barely existed. The collapse in lithium prices in 2010 further drove away many small-scale primary lithium miners. Lithium mines in the United States, along with other copper and rare earth mines, were successively closed and fell into dormancy.

However, this was exactly when Chinese lithium miners began to make exciting global layouts.

In 2018, Tianqi Lithium acquired equity stakes in Chile's SQM from Nutrien, the world's largest potash producer based in Canada.

That year, Argentina's economy fell into recession, and American lithium company LAC was also burdened with increasing debts. It had to sell its Cauchari Lithium Salt Lake project in northern Argentina to Ganfeng Lithium. This left LAC in a rather helpless position, because just four years ago, Ganfeng Lithium was not yet a prominent player, and at that time, it was helping LAC develop the mineral resources.

Chinese mining companies, at the bottom of a commodity cycle, have earned their ticket to the next upward cycle by enduring bad financial reports and holding fast to their convictions. In 2016, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Freeport-McMoRan, a US mining company eager to pay off debts, sold its Tenke Fungurume Mine (TFM), a copper-cobalt mine in the DRC, to China Molybdenum. This was simply an ideal cycle swap. At that time in China, ternary lithium batteries using cobalt as a raw material had just established a阶段性 advantage over another technology school—lithium iron phosphate. Upstream, China Molybdenan had already seized control of cobalt, breaking Glencore's monopoly over the cobalt market.

The exchange of mining ownership during this bear market cycle for bulk commodity trade reveals a soft spot for multinational giants. Under the watchful eyes of Wall Street capital, they abandon one strategic asset after another in a bear market. It’s a battle where the brave prevail. When giants clash, the long-termists win. When Chinese mining companies face unclear mineral interests, their long-termism of enduring hardship to achieve victory beats the short-termism of prioritizing financial statements.

By 2020, Tesla's electric vehicles had already shown the public its ambition to address climate change. The U.S. automotive industry and capital began to shift towards electric vehicles, which also drove people's attention to U.S. lithium mines. Meanwhile, China's active involvement significantly revitalized the increasingly sluggish mining industry in the United States.

The U.S. government has begun to vigorously fund the revitalization of the mining industry, and one of the most convenient pillars to rely on is countering China's full-industry-chain advantages in new energy vehicles. Before 2010, no one would have imagined the geopolitical value of the topic of lithium metal. By 2020, it had become clear that lithium is emerging as a key mineral widely concerned by countries with ambitions in the development of automobiles.

However, like other copper and rare earth miners, American lithium miners have long been tied hand and foot by the will of local residents.

Every lithium mine seems to have a natural guardian, and the mining of the ore is never smooth sailing. The biggest enemy of lithium mining companies is not geopolitics, but social relations. These social relations could be complex indigenous communities, a sluggish bureaucratic system, or even a single wild flower.

Australian lithium company WCP has long been eager to take action in the United States. In 2017, it even changed its name to Piedmont to cater to the Piedmont Region of North Carolina. It even signed an agreement with Tesla Motors in 2020 before obtaining a mining license. However, it faced strong community resistance. It had to negotiate with hundreds of local landowners one by one to possibly acquire the land, which was a lengthy process.

The pioneers, the entrepreneurs of American Ion Ventures, had already detected the potential takeoff of lithium as early as 2016 and had long set foot on a lithium mine in the Nevada desert. However, what the entrepreneurs loved as much as lithium ore was the unique small yellow flower plants here. These small yellow flowers are closely protected by biodiversity organizations. American and Chinese enterprises both spotted the opportunity at the same time, yet they couldn't seize the battlefield at the same speed. This abundant lithium mine is close to Tesla's Gigafactory, but it still has a long way to go before it can truly become Tesla's supplier.

Lithium Americas (LAC), which sold the Argentine lithium lakes to Ganfeng, spun off the assets precisely to focus on the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada. This is the largest lithium mine in the United States and one of the top ten lithium mines globally. Yet Lithium Americas (LAC) is also facing endless protests here. Given that a lithium mine takes five to six years from construction start to production, its future fate remains uncertain.

In 2024, General Motors purchased shares worth $650 million in Lithium Americas Corp., ousting Ganfeng Lithium to become its largest shareholder. Meanwhile, Ganfeng Lithium continued to step back and reduce its stake. In the United States, lithium mines have become a highly sensitive topic, and the restraint shown by Chinese enterprises is a long-term survival strategy.

Albemarle is promoting the restart plan for the existing lithium mine site in Cleveland County, near the North Carolina Piedmont minerals. Breaking ground in the United States involves numerous and endless obstacles. The difficulties Albemarle will face are by no means few. Mining in the United States can hardly be a profitable business. Since World War II, the United States has never completed the integration of the entire industrial chain in a one-stop manner. It is extremely challenging for the United States to achieve localized production of the entire industry, from basic lithium materials, lithium-ion batteries to electric vehicles.

Thanks to the technological revolution in shale oil and gas, the United States has no longer been dependent on oil, but it has fallen into another trap: relying on critical minerals. The biggest challenge in mining in the United States has always been environmental protection approval. The United States is not short of minerals; it has both spodumene and brine lithium ores. The United States holds 24% of the world's lithium deposits. However, by 2030, the expected lithium production in the United States will still fail to meet 5% of the global lithium demand.

No green energy without mining—this is an unavoidable reality. A U.S. senator said: The country must make a choice. Americans are too naive, always thinking that others will take over the dirty, polluting work of mining for us, unaware that the United States is being plunged into an extremely vulnerable position because of this mindset.

Has the United States handed some kind of economic weapon to China and other countries because of the complex and lengthy environmental impact assessment games and bureaucratic approval procedures? The United States has not yet found the answer, and that hard nail that cannot be pulled out is right on its own soil.

Albemarle Corporation of the United States forecasts that the global lithium production capacity will reach 3.7 million tons of LCE by 2030, of which 600,000 tons will be produced by Albemarle. Its 16% share of global output is more than enough to make Albemarle a dominant player in the global lithium market. By comparison, ExxonMobil's oil production accounted for only 2.4% of the global output in 2022. Perhaps Albemarle can wield greater influence over lithium resources than ExxonMobil has over oil, but it can only wage the lithium ore battle beyond the United States.

The world is not short of lithium; what it lacks is rational sentiment

The world is not short of lithium resources, which are widely distributed. Nickel and cobalt metals are often highly concentrated in a small number of countries such as Australia, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while lithium has numerous mineral deposits in the Americas, Africa, Australia, including China. The annual consumption of lithium is expected to exceed 2 million tons for the first time in 2026. In the world of bulk commodities, it is still a small metal variety. However, its strategic weight has become crucial. Moreover, the price of lithium has behaved extremely volatilely.

The volatility of lithium prices over the past three years has perfectly illustrated this metal's irascible and fickle nature. The sharp drop in lithium prices between 2023 and 2024 pushed the entire industry into losses. Tianqi and Ganfeng, the two leading Chinese lithium producers, recorded losses of 8 billion yuan and 2 billion yuan respectively. Without exceptional financial resilience, it is difficult to survive the downturn.

In the first half of 2025, the price of lithium carbonate dropped to 60,000 RMB per ton, then rebounded in the second half, surging strongly to 140,000 RMB per ton. The unexpected boom of energy storage batteries in 2025 rippled up the lithium iron phosphate battery material chain all the way to the lithium mining end. The entire lithium mining industry finally shook off its gloomy situation. By 2026, affected by Zimbabwe's early export controls on lithium concentrate, the global supply curve tightened again, and the price of lithium carbonate continued to consolidate at a high level.

It sounds a bit incredible that every single policy issued by Zimbabwean government officials regarding mines can affect the global price of lithium carbonate.

From the perspective of the industrial structure, the price of lithium carbonate should not have experienced such large fluctuations. The volatile prices of "volatile" nickel and "abnormal" cobalt are clearly driven by supply factors. Over the past 20 years, cobalt has experienced four significant and astonishing price fluctuations, once approaching 1 million RMB per ton in 2008. However, 60% of the world's cobalt supply comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). For nickel, Indonesia also operates an oligopolistic market. Such mines with overly single sources and relatively small consumption volumes are naturally prone to being affected by policy changes in the countries where the mines are located. This is not the case with lithium supply, however.

It takes more than half a year for a lithium mine to resume normal production from a closed state. As for new mines, hard-rock spodumene mines are estimated to take 5 to 8 years, while salt lake projects require 6 to 10 years. With such a long timeline, no one can predict what will happen after the mine is put into production. This leads to the lithium price often experiencing "a sharp surge followed by a long period of no decline, and a sharp drop followed by a long period of no rise".

Skyrocketing without a fall and plummeting without a rise" has become lithium's fate. However, the supply of any mine is a slow variable, and lithium is no different from many other minerals. There must be hidden factors that drive the large fluctuations in lithium prices.

This is directly related to two phenomena in the lithium industry: the elusive "invisible mines" and the hard-to-find "shadow inventories".

Although China has abundant lithium mines, the mining costs are often relatively high. Jiangxi is home to a large amount of low-grade lepidolite, yet its mining cost is nearly twice that of Australian spodumene, reaching 80,000 RMB per ton of lithium carbonate. Unless the price of lithium carbonate is sufficiently high, these mines are not worth developing. This has created an interesting situation. These mines are alternately opened and closed. The key to unlocking the mines is actually the price curve in the lithium carbonate futures market. Just like a dry pond that seems empty, but once heavy rain falls and the pond is full, there will immediately be a chorus of frogs. Once the price of lithium carbonate breaks through, many "hidden frogs" will emerge.

Similarly, a large amount of lithium carbonate is actually not in mines or on production lines but stored in inventories. These may be excess inventories or intentional stockpiles. When prices plummeted in 2024, many mines in Australia chose to suspend production and wait and see, but a large number of unsold ores were stockpiled in warehouses. The shadow inventory between production capacity and actual consumption is very hidden. These shadow inventories are not a small number; they are estimated to account for about 13% of the overall demand. This makes it easy for a mismatch to arise between the output of upstream miners and the intention of real demand. Shadow inventories are hidden in the capillaries and not within the calculation scope of the main arteries.

In terms of the global total resource volume, lithium resources are absolutely abundant. The soaring lithium prices in 2022 stimulated the intensity of geological exploration activities. The results of lithium ore exploration in recent years have continuously refreshed people's understanding. In many places, the world's largest spodumene deposit or the world's largest salt lake reserves have been discovered. Similar records are constantly being broken.

The global lithium industry does not lack lithium, but rational sentiment. The price fluctuations of lithium carbonate are largely supported by emotional pricing. Recognizing that the "shortage" of lithium is not a structural resource depletion but a cyclical price expectation, battery manufacturers often adopt an alternative "calming strategy". When lithium prices soar, battery companies often make high-profile announcements to advance sodium-ion battery projects. This is a way to use the substitution expectation of sodium-ion batteries to suppress the high lithium prices.

In 2022, the price of lithium carbonate reached nearly 600,000 RMB per ton, a historic anomaly that will likely never be seen again. Before that, the price had been pushed to an extremely low point. In 2019, the industry was in an absolute trough, and the brutal price war almost eliminated the vast majority of manufacturers and mining enterprises in the market. Only those enterprises with extreme cost resilience survived. Therefore, the shortage prior to 2022 was a real physical shortage caused by the elimination of production capacity. Many half-asleep and half-dormant frogs that had been lying in wait were all truly wiped out that time.

No Mining, No Green Energy

Any ambitious goal for the green transition is ultimately determined by metals from mines. Even wind and solar power, which seem unrelated, still require metals. At the end of the green energy chain, there must be copper, silver, nickel, cobalt and lithium. As China's green energy technologies sweep the globe, Chinese mining companies have also participated in the competition for the source of mines on the global map. The supply chain security of electric vehicles depends on the dominance in mines. The guarantee of China's advantages in electric vehicles lies in the efforts of Chinese mining companies around the world. China produces about 70% of the world's batteries, and at the mineral end of nickel, cobalt and lithium, it controls approximately 30% of the overseas mineral rights and benefits. This approximately 30% of interests has formed the cornerstone of price stability. Otherwise, China would face the huge risk of being held back by high costs, and the growth of China's "Three New Categories" exports might slow down significantly.

Who makes it possible for us to enjoy the low-cost convenience of electric vehicles?

Who is backing China's power battery to become a new global business card?

Those who strive and struggle are often in places far from people's sight, in the most remote and desolate areas on Earth. Beneath those fluctuating price curves lie the games between nations and the contests of giant tycoons.

In December 2025, the outward transportation of Chinese iron ore from Simandou in Guinea showcased a new opportunity for China to break through iron ore prices. China's rare earth industry shone brightly in 2025, countering the traditional tariffs imposed by the United States with the momentum of a repeating crossbow. Meanwhile, Chinese nickel, cobalt and lithium miners, with a forward-looking vision, kicked off the grand prelude of China's new energy metals a decade ago when the situation was far from clear.

After a decade of lying dormant, all for the sake of conviction. Chinese lithium, cobalt and nickel miners have already taken the lead. Meanwhile, Chinese miners as a whole are shifting from defense to offense. The global mining war has reached an inflection point of major transformation, and China is moving forward.

SunSirs has been continuously tracking price data for over 200 commodities for nearly 20 years, please contact support@sunsirs.com for subscription.