The West owns enough potential mines, the problem is that they don’t care about developing them. Instead they’ll sit on the land for a few years and then sell it on. Also, the problem isn’t the availability of the metals but the processing. China does the processing, and as such they have to buy from China.

“Battle for Resources” is only a partial truth. The resources or rather productive forces will remain underdeveloped as long as capitalists can inflate their spreadsheets through the virtual economy and hiking prices in the short term.