The world is in a heated race for critical minerals—materials like copper, cobalt, lithium, rare earths, and more that are key to the industries of the future, including defense, semiconductor, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and green energy technologies.
But it is China that is leading the way. Beijing has leveraged a massive stockpile of foreign exchange reserves to expand its control over key segments of the global supply chain for these critical minerals (also called “transition minerals”), as found by a groundbreaking AidData report, Power Playbook: Beijing’s Bid to Secure Overseas Transition Minerals, published last year.
Today, AidData has released an updated version of our dataset on China’s global commitments for critical minerals. It tracks over $98 billion of Chinese official sector loans and grants for critical mineral extraction and processing across 47 countries from 2000 to 2023. A forthcoming brief to be released next month will decode further the new trends in this massive portfolio.
To provide deeper dives into how these extraction and processing operations have played out in-country, AidData has also published three updated profiles on minerals sites that have seen significant Chinese investment: the Las Bambas and Toromocho copper mines in Peru and the Sicomines copper-cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
For the first time, the research team has expanded their scope to cover Beijing’s critical minerals financing in not only developing but also high-income countries—including Australia and Canada, which have seen higher levels of Chinese investment.
“We want to help policymakers, journalists, and researchers understand how Beijing is using financial instruments to bankroll transition mineral operations in their countries,” said Brooke Escobar, the Associate Director of AidData’s Tracking Underreported Financial Flows program.
To that end, Escobar and her team expanded the set of minerals covered by their new dataset to include all 32 critical minerals listed by the International Energy Agency. Crucially, they’ve also added a suite of new variables that explore host country cost and benefits—so decision makers in recipient countries can better understand the tradeoffs that come with Chinese financing for mineral deals.
The data reveals a portfolio spread across countries at all levels of development, with 24% of Chinese financing targeting high-income countries, 56% middle-income countries, and 20% low-income countries.
The new data also shows that China’s sprint for critical minerals is squarely focused on upstream and extraction operations (accounting for 85% of financing commitments during the period of study), as Beijing seeks to ensure a steady supply of the minerals most needed to power its economy. To that end, China has prioritized critical minerals operations that are partially or wholly owned by Chinese companies, directing over three-quarters of its lending for those projects.
Next month, AidData will release a new study that analyzes the implications of China’s global critical minerals portfolio, as well as a new set of mining site profiles.
