China’s “peace plan” was impotent, as I said, but at least it finally gave us an official recognition that COVID came from a Chinese lab. With this recognition, the US is telling China to go back to its shed and stop trying to act important.
Concerted TikTok bans in US and Europe are another rap across the knuckles for China.
These are good news.
Clarissa's Blog 
The US and the West weren’t the intended targets for that “peace plan” … and Ukraine itself wasn’t one of them either.
The intended targets are in Africa.
Within the past two days, China has taken one-tenth of the global supply of lithium off the market by forcing the producers through a well-timed government review.
Yes, you say, and what does that have to do with Africa?
Well, if you take enough the DRC’s supply of coltan off the market by making some back channel deals, the electronics industries in the West will very certainly notice.
“We’ll give you better terms” sounds like nothing until you notice that the “better terms” change the game by eliminating middle parties.
Keep an eye on Equatorial Guinea: China may yet get their desired naval base on the Atlantic, along with what we can automatically assume will be yet another large splodge of Wonga.
(“Wonga”: read about Executive Outcomes and what happened to them in Equatorial Guinea back in 2004.)
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Africans don’t make decisions. So a huge China trying to convince weak, insignificant African states of something isn’t realistic. They’ll do what they have to because there are no options.
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Australia is the biggest supplier of lithium. They also have coltan but can’t compete with the DRC on price.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-conflict-mineral-coltan-mining-in-dr-congo-and-australia/
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