The Current Round of Resource Nationalism:Characteristics and Prospects
In recent years,resource nationalism has been significantly resurgent in Latin America,Asia and Africa,being influenced by multiple factors such as the international low-carbon transition,the Russia-Ukraine conflict and great power competition.This round of resurgence reflects both the cyclical fluctuations of history and many new characteristics of the current era.The dominant focus of this new wave of resource nationalism has shifted from oil and gas to critical minerals,and resource-rich countries have been exerting greater resources control and raising the threshold for foreign investments by raising royalties and taxes,sus-pending and/or renegotiating existing contracts,and even implementing the state-ownership of the resource.The current round of resource nationalism generally aims to get rid of over-reliance on resource exploi-tation,strengthen resource sovereignty,control resource flows,and ascend the value chain,so as to pro-mote economic development of resource countries,accelerate industrialization,and expand their influence in the global economy.Compared with the past waves of resource nationalism,many measures taken by the resource-rich countries have recently been more moderate and rational,and most of them have been diversi-fied,strengthening the control of domestic resources on the premise of attracting foreign investments and weakening the anti-colonialism tendency.And,the relationship between the resource-rich countries and for-eign investments has changed from a zero-sum game confrontation to a conflict of interests based on coopera-tion.For those countries,the restriction of foreign investments is conducive to the increase of incomes and economic growth,but it inevitably restricts the increase of investments and production capacity in critical minerals and their related fields around the world,and delays the international low-carbon energy transition.In the short term,the current round of resource nationalism politically caters to the domestic national-ism of resource countries,and to a certain extent contributes to their economic development and transforma-tion.In the context of intensifying competition among great powers and strong global demands for critical minerals,resource nationalism may continue to strengthen in the near to medium term,and the intensity of the countries'control over resources and the proportion of benefits distributed to themselves will increase significantly.In the medium to long term,the damage caused by the moderate and rational resource nation-alism will be relatively limited,confronting increasing restriction from many factors at home and abroad.Technological innovation will also continue to break through constraints of insufficient resources,raising in-creasing resistance to resource nationalism.The international community should actively promote the de-po-liticization of resource cooperation and deepen global resource governance.Relevant enterprises should fore-see the long-term and recurring nature of resource nationalism,actively dissolving investment risks and see-king opportunities in crisis.
energy transitionresource nationalismcritical mineralsnationalizationexport restriction
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