The Scramble for Lithium Triangle: China's Hegemony in Latin America?

China's new hegemonic role in the Lithium Triangle - Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile - exposes its elusive strategies that create 'new dependency' in Latin America. China's resource politics in the lithium triangle offers a case study to understand the changing economic strategies of global power aspirants for securing political gains at the cost of the autonomy of dependent countries. China succeeded in shrinking the region into a mere exporter of minerals and importer of finished goods such as electric vehicles. This, in turn, made China dominant in the lithium and battery industries in a global race to secure renewable energy. The narrative tools of postcolonialism and Kumarappa's notion of predatory economy can be complemented by the old-fashioned theoretical frameworks of dependency and neocolonialism to expose China's hegemony, which deviates from Xi's proclamation of a win-win approach to the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]