Synthesized indicator for evaluating security of strategic minerals in China: A case study of lithium

Abstract

The transition of the economic growth in China from high-speed to high-quality development provides new challenges to strategic minerals (SMs) security. Under the transition, combined with its development status, but also to maintain global coexistence from the entire industrial chain, we in this paper first expound the security connotation of SMs and take lithium resources as an example to evaluate its security in China. Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) is used for sensitivity analysis. Results show that the security level of China's lithium resources is rising but fluctuating, and it is closely related to changes in the sub-object of coexistence. Our results illustrate that the proposed synthesized security indicator can effectively evaluate the security status of China's lithium resources. Therefore, it should be possible to be adapted for evaluating the security status of other SMs.