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The Australo-Chinese lithium squabble is still caught up in the courts – no AVZ representative would speak to me for this article, and when I tried to attend a hearing between the parties at the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Court of Arbitration, in Paris, I was told that such proceedings are secret.
Graeme Johnston, the technical director for AVZ, declined to be interviewed but he did send me a series of emails. In his last message, he wrote that the Chinese firms trying to wrest control of the Manono lithium concession were ‘a bunch of gangsters’.
The cases were in court, he said. ‘We are facing a concerted and well-funded disinformation campaign in the DRC paid for by our Chinese mates,’ he continued.
He ended with a geopolitical kicker, the type of thing that the State Department officer had been so concerned with when we spoke.
‘Since this deposit could supply 20 percent of the global lithium supply it is logical to assume that those who end up with Manono will be able to control the world’s lithium price.’
Nicolas Niarchos
Nicolas Niarchos is a writer whose work focuses on minerals, conflicts and migration.
His work has been published in the
New Yorker, the
Nation and the
New York Times.
In 2023, he won an Edward R. Murrow award for a radio report from Ukraine for the
New Yorker and WNYC.
He is writing an upcoming book about battery metals for Penguin Books.
