Minerals and China’s Military Assistance in the DR Congo A recent DRC mining news story - it continues to be an unmitigated hellhole. Any western company still sourcing from here must be putting their brand reputation on the line and risking compliance with the US' IRA - so to speak, FT's cobalt is a virtuous product that EV manufacturers must be interested in leveraging.
... Western companies have grown increasingly wary of sourcing minerals from the DRC due to human rights abuses in the extractive sector. That reluctance is not shared by the Chinese government and its companies. This has allowed China to increase its extraction of resources – mainly cobalt and copper – from the DRC in recent years.
In 2020, China imported just under $9 billion worth of goods from the DRC, up from just $5.8 billion in 2019. That remarkable jump was not an outlier. China imported goods worth just $1.45 million from the DRC in 1995 – representing average annual growth of over 40 percent. According to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), from 2015 to 2020 China’s imports of cobalt from the DRC ballooned by 191 percent, imports of cobalt oxides by 2,920 percent, and imports of copper ore by 1,670 percent.
China’s increasing imports from the DRC are driven by Beijing’s determination to secure resources critical to a green future, as the clean energy transition has accelerated. More than 50 percent of the cobalt produced globally today goes into rechargeable batteries, but this bluish-gray metal also plays a vital role in military equipment including ammunition, magnets, stealth technology, and jet engines.
Of the 19 cobalt operations in the DRC, 15 are now owned or co-owned by Chinese entities. The five largest Chinese mining corporations with interests in cobalt and copper in the nation have access to credit lines from Chinese state banks totaling an astounding $124 billion.
All told, 70 percent of world’s cobalt is mined in the DRC, and 80 percent of that DRC output then heads to China for processing.
https://thediplomat.com/2022/10/minerals-and-chinas-military-assistance-in-the-dr-congo/