The Chinese communist regime has offered the Taliban $10 billion and a promise to build infrastructure in exchange for access to Afghanistan’s lithium reserves. The context surrounding the deal spans several decades. That includes the fact that the 3-billion-dollar deal by China to develop the Mes Aynak copper mine in Afghanistan never led to a successful mining operation due to insurgency and logistics difficulties. Furthermore, there are cheaper ways for China to get lithium like from Chile. That’s on top of the uncertainty of whether Afghanistan’s lithium resources can actually be extracted profitably.
NTD speaks to Bart Marcois, a former senior official at the U.S. Energy Department. He says China is seeking to secure these mineral rights even if it doesn’t extract the lithium, just so that the regime can charge what it wants for the lithium it’s already producing. Furthermore, Marcois says China is locking up the strategic minerals necessary for electric technology like electric vehicles, making the United States more dependent on China.