The global debate over the need for energy security is growing by the day. With scorching summers plaguing Europe, the promise of freezing winters ahead, the rise in overall technology consumption, and the increased use of electric vehicles, countries around the world now view their electricity supply as critical infrastructure that requires both physical and digital protection, given the increasing risks of hacking. Moreover, the wars in Ukraine and Iran have made this urgency impossible to ignore. Russia's invasion of Ukraine exposed the risks of relying on authoritarian energy suppliers, and the crisis around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz reinforced how quickly fossil fuel dependence can become a domestic economic shock, especially for countries vulnerable to fuel-price spikes.

In this context, electrification has become a tool of strategic resilience, but electrification—both in appliances and in alternative and green energy supplies—depends on batteries, and batteries depend heavily on lithium; and who owns lithium? Few are asking this question, and, most importantly, how it affects liberal countries, the state of democracy in the Global South, and international supply chains.

This is why the lithium market now sits at the center of geopolitical competition. The so-called Lithium Triangle—Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, or ABC—contains 50–60% of the world's lithium reserves, making South America a decisive region in the future of clean technology and industrial autonomy. In 2024, lithium production in the triangle accounted for 29% of global supply, furthering its significance in the race to secure this natural resource. Whoever secures stable access to extraction, processing, and battery supply chains will shape not only the EV market but also the broader balance of technological power; most electrical appliances—phones, computers, and even solar panels—depend on lithium-ion batteries to function.

China understood this earlier than most liberal democracies. Its dominance in the production results from a vertically integrated strategy that links mining, refining, battery production, manufacturing, subsidies, and export expansion. Companies like Tianqi rushed to secure access to lithium, and the company bet on Chilean SQM in 2018 at a price that later put it in financial stress, since the commodity didn't reach the expected levels. Even more, the main lithium export destinations from the triangle include China, the world's largest consumer (which holds approximately 55% of the global share), and later the United States and Europe. This is no surprise, as China also produces roughly 70% of the global EV supply and has leveraged that advantage to exert market influence across Latin America. Yet the more important question is upstream: Who controls the lithium and the battery chain before the vehicle is even assembled?

China's dominance of these markets matters for several reasons, including the ongoing geopolitical competition with Western economies and the documented impact of Chinese political and economic pressures. Beijing's presence in Latin America is not always a neutral commercial presence. In Peru and Bolivia, Beijing's growing influence in strategic sectors connected to mining, infrastructure, and battery supply chains has increasingly resembled coercive economic statecraft. Chinese firms do not operate in isolation from the strategic priorities of the Chinese state. Their expansion can create dependencies that limit local policy autonomy, shape infrastructure decisions, and reduce the bargaining power of host countries.