Matt Bevan

While the landlocked Bolivians try to figure out how to get their lithium to the coast, the famously sea-girt Australians did what they did best, digging up rocks and shipping them to China.

In 2022, the price of lithium skyrocketed, largely because of a surge in demand for electric vehicles.

So Australian miners began cashing in.

This all could have been very simple for China.

just buy lithium from established producers like Australia and Chile.

No worries, as we say in Australia.

Yapol, as they say in Chile.

But Xi Jinping had a more complex plan.

And buying lithium from Australia and Chile, two strong allies of the United States, was, in their view, not ideal.

So China started investing billions of dollars into developing lithium mining operations in Bolivia and scaling up its own domestic lithium mining capacity.

Jiangxi province in eastern China has lithium deposits, but they're low quality and very expensive to extract.

But that didn't matter because China was determined not to buy from a US ally.

Once they were up and running, Jiangxi's mines started flooding the market with cheap lithium, despite running at a massive loss.

That extra supply, combined with slower demand for batteries and EVs, sent prices tumbling.

For Australian lithium miners like Minres boss Chris Ellison, the situation was dire.

China's grip on the market meant many Australian mines were shut down as prices fell below the cost of production.

This strategy by Xi Jinping isn't unique to lithium either.

As we've discussed on this show before, China has managed to monopolise production of all sorts of critical minerals by running their mining and processing operations at a loss and ignoring environmental regulations.

Ever since he was inaugurated as president in 2013, Xi Jinping has been spending literally trillions of dollars on global infrastructure projects that make little to no economic sense.

Railway lines across Africa, pipelines across Pakistan and Myanmar, stadiums in Solomon Islands, ports scattered all around the world.