On October 31, 2025, the G7 unveiled a new plan detailing the first round of strategic investments under the Critical Minerals Production Alliance (CMPA), an international body connecting governmental and private industry capacities designed to increase access to rare earth minerals. The announcement entailed investment in 26 specific projects predominantly across Canada from G7 members. This move represents a new development in the global race to secure rare earth minerals, which are essential to producing advanced technologies used in healthcare, computer science, and renewable energy generation.
This initiative comes as a response to China’s growing dominance in critical mineral extraction and refinement. Currently China accounts for more than 70% of global extraction and 85% of refinement, which virtually cements it as the largest player in this area. In addition to this, China has massively expanded renewable energy production, building more wind and solar capacity than the rest of the world combined in 2024, and come to dominate the EV (electric vehicle) market. While China has notably continued to build coal-fired plants, its expansion into renewable energy production increases its geopolitical independence and combined with its mineral extraction dominance solidifies it as the current leading global player.
In response, Western leaders have scrambled to counteract a rapidly shifting global resource market. China has already announced multiple restrictions on exports, which would create significant waves in global supply chains, and ultimately give it incredible leveraging power over the global market. This article explores how the Chinese managed to position themselves so advantageously and considers whether the rest of the world may be able to challenge such dominance. Specifically concerning EV production, critical mineral extraction/refinement and renewable energy capacity, China has jumped ahead in almost every key sector within the Green Transition. This article analyzes how these developments fit within a broader geopolitical context, and begs the question: has China already won the Green Transition?
How China secured its position
Leveraging its massive population to become the largest global manufacturer, China quickly became one of the world’s most influential states over the last two decades. It then expanded its soft-power politics rapidly in the 21st century mainly through its Belt and Road Initiative, which traded infrastructure projects and construction in developing nations for territory-usage agreements, resources and local political influence.
Despite these advances, China’s international status remained vulnerable in a key area: energy. Despite the country’s large size, the primarily abundant resource in China is lignite, which is also known as “brown coal” and is the far dirtier and less-efficient coal used usually for electricity generation. This forced Beijing to look elsewhere to power its burgeoning industrial capacity, pivoting to buy Russian oil and gas as well as “black” coal from Australia for several decades. Realizing that its position on the world stage was being hindered by its reliance on foreign energy imports, China created a plan to begin implementing cleaner and more efficient forms of energy. While it still relies upon coal for more than 50% of total energy production, this number has been slashed in recent years due to heavy investment in wind and solar capacity. China set a goal to surpass 1,200 Gigawatts of energy via renewable by 2030—due to investment and development, it met that target six years ahead of schedule. China added 357 GW of energy production in wind and solar in 2024, equating to an increase of 45% and 18% of domestic production respectively. To put these numbers in perspective, a single Gigawatt is what a traditional mid-sized nuclear power plant would produce in a single year. While coal plants have also seen an increase, renewable installation and generation has reached unprecedented levels. China’s authoritarian government gives it an advantage compared to its rivals in modifying policy and streamlining construction as it is not hindered by bureaucratic red tape and special interests.
The second significant component to the strategy is its new EV-manufacturing capacity. China historically has been an auto importer; this hindered Chinese innovation for decades, however since Tesla opened factories in the country to further slash manufacturing costs in 2018 (check this), there have been multiple documented instances of intellectual property theft to help develop domestic EV manufacturing.
Chinese EV companies have unsurprisingly surged in the last few years, led by BYD which has nearly surpassed Tesla and other domestic manufacturers in units sold in the EU. When including Asian markets, BYD is quickly becoming one of the most valuable automobile manufacturers on the planet, selling 4.27 million vehicles across 2024 and continuing its dominance into 2025. Chinese EV companies sold more than 11 million units in 2024, a 40% year on year increase, and accounted for more than two thirds of the global market according to the IEA. Despite EU tariffs leveled at Chinese manufacturers, this appears to be a long shot to protect European manufacturers against a surge in Eastern competition. BYD and other Chinese manufacturers were able to subvert EU tariffs levied at Chinese electric vehicles this August: by building their cars as hybrids with a small gas-combustion engines (PHEVs), they have been able to work around a staggering 45% tariff levied at solely electric vehicles (BEVs). Despite this loophole receiving public attention, the EU has been lackadaisical in closing it.
Combined with China’s advantage in global mineral trade, its dominance in the EV market is almost guaranteed to increase. Lithium is the most important metal for battery production; China is responsible for 65% of global lithium refinement and 75% of battery cell production. Additionally, more than two thirds of global battery recycling is conducted in China. Not only are Chinese EV companies dominating global sales, but Beijing can also manipulate the global market of both valuable metals as well as batteries required for foreign EV production. China has already done so over the past year by announcing tariffs and restrictions on rare earth exports multiple times, prompting foreign leaders to compensate. Due to its rapid buildup in renewable energy generation, an unrivaled grip on crucial mineral extraction and refinement, and increasing dominance in the global EV market, it appears the global race for a Green Transition is China’s to lose.
How has the West responded?
In his seminar given for the OHPA in November 2024, Professor Jeff Colgan discussed EV manufacturing in the United States, Canada, and the EU. Professor Colgan elucidated that most American firms only shifted their manufacturing plans to include significant EV investment during the Biden administration, largely reducing them during the Trump administrations. EU firms have made more significant pledges but mainly have yet to see legitimate action to switch to primarily EV manufacturing. The notable exception is BMW, which has rolled out an impressive amount of battery EVs and aims to release a hydrogen EV in 2028.
However, these numbers pale in comparison to the rise in Chinese EV manufacturing. While the US added several hundred gigawatts of clean energy in 2023 to its grid, as well as significant investment in auxiliary including carbon capture tech and EV charging stations, it appears paltry compared to Chinese hyper-investment and development. With the Trump administration promising to “drill baby drill,” undoing several Biden administration actions to protect federal lands, and pulling out of the Paris agreement for a second time, the world’s largest economy seems remarkably ill equipped to handle the inevitable transition to a renewably powered future. BYD and other Chinese firms have positioned themselves to be at the forefront of newly expanding EV markets which will dominate the 21st century and beyond, and if current manufacturing trends continue Chinese automobiles will surpass foreign competitors, using affordable EVs to fortify its position.
Concerning critical minerals and rare earth metals, the Western bloc is at present unprepared to challenge China in the global extraction and refinement market. The Belt and Road Initiative, combined with other forms of soft-power diplomacy, enticed many developing nations to enter into agreements with Chinese firms to trade natural resources for development. Even when said resources are extracted by non-Chinese firms, they are typically refined in China: except for nickel (Indonesia), China dominates refinement of copper (83%), lithium (73%), cobalt (97%), graphite (98%), and rare earths (96%).
The G7 has finally begun to comprehend how dire of a situation this has become from a strategic standpoint. Organizations such as the CMPA represent a multi-national effort to counter China’s growing resource control, but it may be too little too late. While the expansion of investments, particularly exploratory and R&D (research and development) efforts in Canada and other allied countries, it seems dubious at present that enough critical minerals can be extracted and refined at a capacity that it would make the West able to avoid dealing with China.
Can China be unseated?
China is in an indisputably advantageous position; historically nations that control vital resources have been able to leverage this for geopolitical influence. With its buildup of renewable generation capacities, it is reasonable to infer this position will strengthen further.
Demand for critical minerals and metals has increased drastically in the early 2020s and continue due to the explosion of demand driven by EVs, semiconductors, and renewable generation technologies.
Critical minerals and metals represent a potential security weakness due to the increasing automation and computerization of war-fighting technologies. Even if China never invades and captures Taiwan (the world’s most prominent semiconductor manufacturer) it could still hinder a potential adversary by bottlenecking exports of refined critical metals. Even if the West develops superior security technologies, it may be extremely difficult to build them with a limited supply of irreplaceable components. These technologies at present may become less valuable and require fewer critical minerals in future. Many proposed climate policies elucidate the need for an overall reduction of personal automobiles, thus potentially reducing the demand for metals like lithium and cobalt for EVs. Other fuel sources, specifically green hydrogen, may also play an important role in substituting fossil fuels.
A final variable that will help define the coming century is the global demographic crisis. Across the industrialized world, most nations are grappling with an unprecedented aging crisis. As populations in industrialized states age rapidly, this shifts a greater number of the population to retirement age, rendering a greater percentage of populations as economic dependents instead of producers. The pension systems which most industrialized countries employ were not designed to contend with such a development, and the demographic shift of less births and more elderly presents an increasingly difficult challenge to contend with.
China is among these industrialized countries and is further hindered by two key factors. The one-child policy has proven to hamper China’s population, creating an imbalance of young men which struggle to find partners start families. Furthermore, as China industrialized, its labor costs also increased, forcing manufacturing clients to switch to other locations in Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam for lower production costs. All these variables present an uphill battle that the Beijing will be forced to contend with.
In conclusion, China is in a remarkably strong position regarding its control over both extraction and refinement of critical earth minerals and metals which are increasing in demand. These components are essential for not just security and computer technologies, but also required for renewable electricity generation, making them vital pieces to the Green Transition puzzle. As the collective West and the rest of the world begins to compensate for China’s position, it remains dubious if the G7 will be able to compensate for the head start Beijing enjoys. Myriad variables remain in play, but China’s role as the world’s critical metal refiner places it in an undeniably favorable position to influence the Green Transition in its favor.