Cover Story: How Resource Nationalism Is Redrawing the Global Mineral Playbook
By Luo Guoping, Lu Yutong and Han Wei
In early December, the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a strategic partnership with the United States, trading preferential American access to its copper, cobalt and lithium resources for U.S. security assurances.
The agreement followed a February letter from Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi to the White House proposing mineral access in exchange for U.S. support in brokering a peace deal with Rwanda to end a 30-year conflict in the east of the country.
While peace remains elusive, the move highlights a growing change in global politics, with resource-rich countries seeking to convert mineral wealth into security guarantees, diplomatic leverage and strategic influence.
It is a symptom of a resurgent wave of resource nationalism. From Africa to Latin America and parts of Asia, mineral-rich countries are reshaping the global mining industry and complicating strategic calculations in both Washington and Beijing.
Increasing demands for the minerals that underpin electric vehicles, clean energy and artificial intelligence (AI) has led to governments rewriting investment rules — pressing for larger state equity stakes, higher taxes and a move away from exporting raw ore toward domestic processing.
“The core demand of resource countries is to protect local interests by taking a larger share of returns, participating more deeply and capturing higher value,” said Cheng Jun, a partner at the law firm Zhong Lun. In a September 2025 report, the firm said this new phase of resource nationalism has returned with “unprecedented” force, marked by more sophisticated fiscal tools and tighter regulatory intervention.
For China, the implications are significant. Over the past decades, the country has emerged as the world’s largest processor, consumer and overseas investor in mineral resources. Now, many of the countries supplying those raw materials are tightening terms and asserting greater control.
Chinese companies such as Ganfeng Lithium Group and Tianqi Lithium Corp. have already seen assets nationalized or diluted in Mexico and Chile. At the same time, the landscape is growing more complex as the U.S. and its allies accelerate efforts to build alternative supply chains, explicitly seeking to reduce dependence on China.
The new strategic prize
The global economy is undergoing a historic change — from one driven by fuels to one increasingly defined by minerals — recasting metals such as copper, cobalt and lithium as strategic assets.
A surge in new-energy industries, supply-chain disruptions since 2020 and a rapid acceleration in AI since 2023 have transformed demand dynamics.
Prices for metals including copper and gold hit record highs in 2025, underscoring their growing economic and strategic weight. “The intensity of resource nationalism tends to rise in direct proportion to the value of mineral products,” one industry researcher said.
Nowhere is that leverage more evident than in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The country holds about 54.5% of the world’s cobalt reserves and accounts for more than 70% of global production, according to the U.S. Geological Survey data. It also possesses large copper and lithium deposits.
The Congo first signaled its ambitions in 2018, when it overhauled its mining law to raise royalties and insist on greater state participation. In 2025, it went further, imposing a cobalt export quota system aimed at forcing foreign investors to build domestic smelting and processing capacity.
“If you want cobalt, you can only go to Congo,” said an executive at a leading Chinese resources company. Once largely a niche material used in pigments and enamel, cobalt has become a critical input with the rapid rise of rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage.
Western governments, meanwhile, are looking at their exposure. Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global, said critical minerals have emerged as a new determinant of global economic power and are now deeply embedded in energy systems. The U.S. National Security Strategy released in 2025 identified reliance on foreign critical minerals as a strategic vulnerability, encouraging a renewed push to rebalance supply chains.
Carlos Pascual, senior vice president at S&P Global Energy, said supply-chain diversification has become an unavoidable choice for governments, reflecting a new commercial, technological and economic reality.
That effort, however, collides with China’s entrenched position in mineral processing. China refines more than 70% of the world’s lithium, about half of its copper and over 90% of rare earth elements.
While a full decoupling of mineral supply chains from China remains unlikely in the near term, competition over control of these resources is intensifying and will remain a central source of investment risk, the Chinese resources executive said.
The resulting tension is especially acute for developing and resource-rich countries caught between competing powers.
Wang Yongzhong, head of the International Commodities Research Office at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said China retains clear advantages in electric vehicles, batteries, solar and wind power, while the U.S. is seeking to deepen its involvement in Africa and Latin America. That dynamic, he said, places heavy pressure on resource countries to make difficult trade-offs — some of which may not favor Chinese companies.
A December 2025 report by a research arm of state-owned mining group China Minmetals Corp. said tighter policies among African resource producers are adding complexity and cost to supply chains, while accelerating a regional redistribution of economic benefits.
Song Yiming, an international relations lecturer at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said environmental and cost constraints mean mining output in developed economies is unlikely to rise significantly. As demand continues to grow, increases in production will largely come from resource-supplying countries, even as global industrial and supply chains become more clearly divided into competing blocs, he said.
Rewriting the playbook
Resource-rich countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America are increasingly seeking to reconfigure global value chains. According to research compiled by a team at Zijin Mining Group, more than 40 countries have revised mining policies since 2020, with a clear trend toward greater localization of industrial chains, higher taxes and royalties, tighter export controls and, in some cases, nationalization of strategic minerals — all aimed at retaining more value at home.
From Kinshasa to Santiago, resource countries are following a similar script to assert control, with many modeling their approach on Indonesia’s.
In 2009, Indonesia introduced a mining law to sharply expand government control over natural resources. From 2014 onward, Jakarta banned the export of unprocessed ores, including bauxite and nickel. The policy forced foreign investors to localize production by building smelters, battery plants and other downstream facilities, while requiring foreign miners to divest majority control to Indonesian partners.
The strategy rapidly reshaped the industry, turning Indonesia within a few years into the world’s second-largest stainless-steel producer, behind China.
“That is the power of policy,” the Chinese resources executive said.
Following Indonesia’s lead, Zimbabwe, home to Africa’s largest lithium deposits, and neighboring Namibia have both banned the export of raw key minerals, mandating that they be processed into higher-value forms like battery-grade materials before leaving their borders.
Alongside this industrial ambition, governments are using financial levers to seize a larger share of profits. Increasing state ownership is a favored method.
The DRC requires a minimum 10% “free carry” government stake that grows with each license renewal, while Mali’s new code pushed for up to 35% state and local ownership, sparking a major clash with Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold. In a global first, Guinea is demanding a 15% stake not just in the massive Simandou iron ore project but also in the project’s critical infrastructure. Such moves are often paired with aggressive tax hikes, like the DRC’s new 10% “super-profit” tax on cobalt or Zambia’s repeated increases to its mining levies.
In the most extreme cases, countries are resorting to outright nationalization, a path particularly favored in Latin America. Mexico nationalized its lithium sector in 2022, canceling nine concessions held by China’s Ganfeng Lithium Group, which has since filed for international arbitration. Similarly, Chile’s government orchestrated a deal for state-owned Codelco to assume a 51% controlling stake in the assets of SQM, the world’s second-largest lithium producer, a move that directly impacts Chinese firm Tianqi Lithium Corp., a major SQM shareholder.
“In the past, you could stabilize a large investment through an agreement with the government that was ratified by parliament,” said Zhong Lun’s Cheng. “Even that is becoming difficult now.”
The limits of leverage
For all their ambition, many resource-rich countries lack the institutional capacity, infrastructure and technical expertise needed to manage complex industrial projects. In DRC, for example, plans to develop a domestic battery industry are constrained by an unstable power grid that can meet less than half the current smelting demand.
That gap creates an inherent tension. Governments seek foreign capital and technology while remaining wary of outside control — a contradiction that can lead to abrupt policy shifts. “They are caught between being open and guarded,” said one energy researcher, adding that such dynamics make policy reversals more likely. For investors, the risk is that rules change after capital has been committed, making projects unviable.
Overplaying leverage can also backfire. In Panama, a public backlash forced the closure of the country’s largest copper mine in 2023, a project that accounted for roughly 5% of national GDP and remains shut as negotiations drag on.
In Mali, a protracted dispute with Barrick Gold culminated in the suspension of operations at the Loulo-Guonkoto complex, one of the world’s top 10 gold mines, costing the company an estimated 18 months of production — worth $3 billion to $4 billion — before it largely accepted the government’s terms.
“Resource nationalism has strong historical inertia,” said Song Yiming, of Beijing Foreign Studies University. “For local governments, it functions like a toolbox — one they reach for whenever energy prices rise or domestic economic pressures intensify.”
Recalculating the risk
For foreign investors, the new environment demands a fundamental reassessment of risk. “Most risks are a matter of cost,” said Zhang Weibo, director of strategy and information at Zijin Mining. He argued the key is to avoid “fatal” risks and price the rest into the investment model. “If the numbers still show a positive return, it remains an investment target.”
Chinese mining companies, with their high tolerance for risk and experience operating in challenging environments, see an opportunity as Western firms retreat. “Take copper. We can make a profit from 0.3% grade ore in China,” said a Chinese resource executive. “In the DRC, mines with 6% to 10% grade are still plentiful.”
But the winning strategy is changing from confrontation to cooperation. After years of crippling community protests and roadblocks at its Las Bambas copper mine in Peru, Chinese owner MMG Ltd., a Minmetals unit, has redesigned its community engagement model, creating local companies to handle transport and construction, thereby incorporating residents into the value chain. Following the shift, “operational risks at the mine have been significantly reduced,” said MMG CEO Zhao Jing Ivo in August 2025.
Barrick Gold, chastened by its experience in Mali, is also adopting a new strategy, focused on building long-term partnerships with governments and communities rather than confrontation.
The ultimate challenge, for both countries and corporations, lies in finding a new equilibrium. Resource nations have a right to benefit from their natural endowments, but if they set the bar too high before they have the capacity to deliver, they risk scaring away the very investment needed to industrialize, industry experts said.
The trajectory of resource nationalism hinges on whether leaders possess the strategic judgment to pursue national benefit patiently, without resorting to rash, destructive measures, said a person close to the China-backed Simandou iron ore project in Guinea.
“The path from a resource-based economy to an industrialized one is a road that requires patience,” he added.
Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com)
caixinglobal.com is the English-language online news portal of Chinese financial and business news media group Caixin. Global Neighbours is authorized to reprint this article.
Image: Андрей Трубицын – stock.adobe.com