Chinese overseas investment in metals and mining through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) hit record heights last year, amid calls from western governments to reduce reliance on the country’s supply of critical minerals.
Investment and construction deals under the BRI programme totalled nearly US$215bn in 2025, the highest annual figure to date, according to a report published on January 19 by the Green Finance and Development Center, a think tank based at Shanghai’s Fudan University.
China’s engagement in metals and mining totalled US$32.6bn, of which 61% was directed to processing facilities such as smelters, said the report, co-authored by Australia’s Griffith University. The figure surpasses the previous record, set in 2024.
It described metals as an “important growth sector of strategic importance to China”, supporting the three key industries of electric vehicles, batteries and renewable energy.
A further expansion this year “seems possible despite (or because of) global economic headwinds driven by US-led trade impositions”, the report added.
“Furthermore, global trade volatilities and uncertainties can spur investments in supply chain resilience and exploration of new markets by Chinese companies.”
The largest destination market for BRI deals was Kazakhstan, where China’s engagement totalled US$12bn in aluminium and US$7.5bn in copper.
The paper added that copper attracted significant interest in the second half of 2025, likely to support the development of data centres and artificial intelligence, as well as electricity networks.
However, concerns have continued to grow among western governments over reliance on China as a hub for both extraction and processing, with the country holding a 40% share of the global market for copper refining, as well as 35% for nickel, 65% for cobalt and 58% for lithium.
Although demand for critical minerals is expected to far exceed supply over the next decade, low prices and ESG concerns have acted as a drag on investment in both extraction and processing outside the Chinese market.
Finance ministers from the G7 nations, as well as Australia, India, Mexico and South Korea, met last week in Washington, DC to discuss how to secure and diversify critical mineral supply chains.
“Attendees expressed a strong, shared desire to quickly address key vulnerabilities in critical minerals supply chains,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement issued after the summit.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent highlighted “deficiencies” in current arrangements and warned that supply chains “have also become highly concentrated and vulnerable to disruption and manipulation”.
US President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on January 15 stating that the country’s reliance on imports for critical minerals represents a national security risk, as it lacks secure and reliable supply chains and is exposed to price volatility.
The proclamation said the US would negotiate with trading partners to adjust imports of critical minerals, and may consider introducing minimum import prices for specific goods.
Although financing was not addressed directly, the president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States attended last week’s meeting, and the country is one of 14 members of a financing network launched by the Minerals Security Partnership last year.
The BRI report also noted that China’s BRI-related engagement in the energy sector totalled around US$94bn, more than double the previous record set in 2024.
Though green energy accounted for more than US$18bn of that total, the report said fossil fuel engagement constituted three-quarters of overseas investment – the highest proportion in over a decade.
Its author, Griffith University’s Christoph Nedopil, said he expected BRI engagements to be lower this year than in 2025, but that the need for “significant investment” in mining, alongside efforts to scale energy and data centre investment, will likely mean strong engagement continues in those sectors.
