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Sichuan province has one of China’s richest and most accessible reserves of lithium, and mining more of the critical resource there would reduce the nation’s dependency on imports.
South America’s Lithium Triangle contains more than half of the world’s reserves of the critical metal that is used in batteries, but its sourcing has been politicised amid geopolitical tensions with the West.
Project will help diversify China’s supply chain but won’t cut out Canberra completely, analysts say.