维持 wei2chi2 preserve+support = be maintained hold out last
nb this wei2 is also an abbreviation for Uighurs.
钴矿gu3kuang4 cobalt mine
争奇 zheng1qi1 struggle
输给了 shu1gei3le lost to
China purports to have won in a struggle with the United States to control cobalt mines. I don’t regard resource constraints as a principal driver, though they certainly do drive international relations. Generally speaking international relations are more influenced by culture and ideology then by geography and climate. Locations of raw materials are part of geography, they are a secondary driver, but exceptionally can be decisive. This is the case of a secondary material contradiction being an exceptional driver of history: usually such contradictions are not driving forces, they only emerge as such in exceptional cases and not as a general rule.