Chinese premier’s Western Australia tour spotlights global race for critical minerals

Sydney – Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited a lithium processing plant in resource-rich Western Australia state on Tuesday, highlighting China’s push to secure critical minerals as Washington tries to break Beijing’s supply dominance.
Western Australia supplies more than half of the world’s seaborne iron ore, with China its top customer, and half of its lithium used in electric vehicles, smartphones and other electronic devices.

Li’s visit to Australia, which began Sunday, is the first by a Chinese premier in seven years and marks a stabilisation in ties between the U.S. ally and the world’s second-biggest economy.
While China has largely lifted suspensions imposed on $20 billion worth of Australian exports in 2020, after Canberra sought an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, it continues to express concerns about obstacles to Chinese investment in Australia’s vast resources industry.

The issue of how Australia screens Chinese investment in its critical minerals sector was expected to be discussed at a business roundtable in Perth attended by Li and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Critical minerals including rare earths have become an area of intense competition between China and the U.S., which sees Australia’s deposits as a way to break China’s strangehold over global supply.
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Australia last month blocked several Chinese investors from increasing stakes in a rare earths miner on national interest grounds, and last year blocked the acquisition of a lithium mine by Chinese interests.
The U.S. this year extended its support for the first time to back two Australian-listed rare earths projects to help build out the supply chain.
Li said on Monday that China hoped Australia would provide “a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese enterprises”, and told the business roundtable the two countries benefit from each other’s development.