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According to the IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario, the demand for critical minerals, particularly rare earth elements such as nickel, copper, lithium, and cobalt, and others are expected to quadruple by 2040 due to soaring consumption. This forecast is primarily driven by the global shift towards sustainable energy technologies. In 2021, the United States Department of the Interior published a list of 50 critical minerals that are essential for the production of technologies related to energy, defence, agriculture, consumer electronics, and healthcare. The temporal-spatial effects of climate change and escalation of supply chain crisis have drawn global spotlight on China’s monopoly on the supply chain of critical minerals. This monopoly owes to the development of production-driven specialisation in China’s supply chain cities, spanning from foreign direct investment-driven clusters in Guangdong to single-producer clusters in Zhejiang. Concerning China’s geopolitical use of these minerals in cases such as the Senkaku-Diaoyu island dispute with Japan (2010) and the trade war with the US (2018), the high-import-dependent countries are introducing strategies at bilateral and multilateral levels to reduce their dependence on China. Examples include the Quad Critical Minerals Partnership Act, the European Raw Materials Alliance (2020), Australia’s Global Resources Strategy (2021), and the US Compete Act (2022), among others. Using this context, this talk will address the question of “Will China’s dominance on the supply chain of critical minerals endure, given that the world’s reliance on China is already shifting due to multiple multilateral and bilateral initiatives?”
About the Speaker
Ms. Neha Mishra is an Associate Fellow (Indo-Pacific Group) at the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS). She is doing her PhD from University of Delhi on ‘The Interplay of Political Economy and Clean Technologies: Scrutinizing India-China Geo-economic Engagement’. Her research interests include the analysis of developing variables that play a crucial role in the national and global energy transition and their impact on the geopolitical and geo-economic equations between countries, such as critical minerals, rare earth elements, renewables, and so on. As a research associate, she is working on a book project titled ‘Strategic Use of Rare Earth Elements: Major Powers and Emerging Players’. She has penned analytical views on growing agreements and transactions between nations for the supply chain resilience of critical minerals and rare earth elements, primarily between India, the United States, Australia, Japan, Myanmar, and Malaysia, among others. She has published three chapters on rare earth related topics. She was the associate editor of Diplomacy in Turmoil: A Year of Turbulence, ADR 2022.
About the Chair
Mr. Ravi Bhoothalingam is Founder and Chairman of Manas Advisory, a Consultancy practice focusing on Top Management Coaching. He is an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. He holds a Master’s degree in Experimental Psychology from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where he was guided by Joseph Needham, the reputed scientist and Sinologist. Ravi also holds an AMP from Harvard Business School. Ravi has travelled extensively in China and its neighbourhood, and has led expeditions across Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Mongolia and Myanmar. He is a member of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Core Group on China and sits on the Editorial Boards of China Report and World Affairs. His interests cover the history of China and practice of Confucianism, science and technology, and Sino-Indian business ties. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, London.