随着洛阳钼业(China Molybdenum)本月早些时候宣布正在收购非洲最大铜矿之一，有一点很快变得明朗：这项收购远不止是奔着这种红色金属而来。

The $2.65bn deal, the biggest private investment in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s history, is instead designed to secure China’s supplies of cobalt, a once niche raw material that is crucial to developing batteries for electric cars.

相反，这笔26.5亿美元、刚果民主共和国(DRC)历史上最大规模的私人投资，旨在确保中国的钴供应。钴曾是一种利基原材料，如今对研发电动汽车电池至关重要。

The purchase of the Tenke mine, which contains one of the world’s largest known deposits of copper and cobalt, shows how Chinese companies are now moving to take a dominant position in battery materials as the country prepares to shift its economy from heavily polluting industries.

Tenke铜钴矿是世界已知铜、钴储量最多的矿之一，收购该矿显示出，在中国准备使本国经济摆脱高污染产业之际，中国企业正在电池材料领域抢占主导地位。

Companies that make batteries for carmakers, from Tesla Motors to General Motors, will be increasingly reliant on Chinese-controlled supply chains as they scale up production of the electric cars western policymakers hope will help cut emissions and reliance on imported oil.

随着从特斯拉汽车(Tesla Motors)到通用汽车(General Motors)的汽车制造商不断提高电动汽车产量，为他们生产电池的企业将越来越依赖中国企业控制的供应链。西方政策制定者希望电动汽车能有助于减少碳排放以及对进口石油的依赖。

“The majority of the cobalt is heading straight to China,” said Edward Spencer, an analyst at metals consultancy CRU. “Their global hold is huge.”

“大多数钴都直接运往中国，”金属商品咨询机构英国商品研究所(CRU)分析师爱德华?斯宾塞(Edward Spencer)说，“他们控制着巨大的全球份额。”

If the Tenke mine deal goes through, Chinese companies will be responsible for around 62 per cent of global refined cobalt production next year, according to CRU estimates. Demand for the material is expected to soar by more than two-thirds over the next decade.

根据CRU的估算，如果Tenke铜钴矿收购完成，中国企业明年将占到全球精炼钴产量的62%左右。未来10年，全球钴需求预计将猛增逾三分之二。

In many ways, China is following a familiar playbook. At the turn of the millennium, the country moved to secure supplies of traditional commodities like oil and industrial metals, sometimes through acquisitions, other times through investments and loans-for-oil deals with countries such as Angola and Venezuela that held big deposits of the raw materials.

在很多方面，中国都遵循着相似的套路。在世纪之交，中国开始着手获取石油、工业金属等传统大宗商品的供应——有时通过收购，有时通过投资，或是与安哥拉、委内瑞拉等原材料储量丰富的国家签订贷款换石油协议。

But China’s control of other commodities last decade raised strategic concerns in Washington and Tokyo, after so-called rare earth metals — which were then primarily mined in China — were subject to export restrictions.

但中国限制所谓的稀土金属（当时主要在中国开采）出口后，过去10年中国对其他种类大宗商品的控制引起了华盛顿和东京方面的战略担忧。

Beijing is now pushing the development of its electric vehicle market as a strategic goal, aiming to make its carmakers more competitive abroad while reducing air pollution at home.

如今，北京方面正将推动本国电动汽车市场发展作为战略目标，希望提升本土汽车制造商在国际上的竞争力，同时减少国内空气污染。

China Moly’s largest shareholders are Luoyang Mining Group, a state-owned company, and Cathay Fortune Corp, a Shanghai-based private equity company.

洛阳钼业的大股东包括国企洛阳矿业集团(Luoyang Mining Group)和总部位于上海的私人股本公司鸿商产业控股集团(Cathay Fortune Corp)。

The DRC, one of the world’s poorest countries, accounts for over half of the world’s supply of cobalt, which is also used in smartphone batteries. The Tenke mine, which lies in the south-east of the DRC, some 175km north-west of the provincial capital of Lubumbashi, last year produced 16,000 tonnes of cobalt and it has reserves that could last 25 years, according to the company.

刚果民主共和国是世界最贫穷国家之一，供应全球一半以上的钴。钴也用于智能手机电池的生产。Tenke铜钴矿位于刚果民主共和国东南部，在省会城市卢本巴希(Lubumbashi)西北约175公里。洛阳钼业表示，去年Tenke钴产量为1.6万吨，其钴储量还可继续开采25年。

“Chinese strategists have long seen the DRC as one of the prime places for Chinese access to raw material, including cobalt,” says Alex Vines, head of the Africa programme at Chatham House. “I’ve always suspected the natural resources-for infrastructure model that happened in Angola was actually a testing of a model they wanted to deploy in the DRC.”

“中国战略家们长期以来一直将刚果民主共和国视为中国获得包括钴在内的原材料的理想地之一，”英国皇家国际事务研究所(Chatham House)非洲项目负责人亚历克斯?瓦因斯(Alex Vines)表示，“我一直怀疑在安哥拉推行的自然资源换基础设施模式实际上是一次测试，中国人希望将这种模式应用在刚果民主共和国。”

Around 93 per cent of China’s cobalt units originate in the DRC, according to analysts at Macquarie, the highest proportion of commodity supply from a single country. That is unlike other battery commodities such as lithium, where China can supply 17 per cent of its own supply.

麦格理(Macquarie)的分析师表示，中国约93%的钴原料来自刚果民主共和国，这是由单个国家供应大宗商品的最高比例。这还不同于锂等其他电池原料商品，中国国内可以提供17%的锂原料供应。

“There’s no other commodity where China is so reliant on a single country,” says Colin Hamilton, an analyst at Macquarie. “When you have that concentration risk they want some degree of security.”

“在其他大宗商品上，中国都没有如此依赖单个国家，”麦格理分析师科林?汉密尔顿(Colin Hamilton)表示，“当面临这种集中度风险时，他们需要某种程度的安全保障。”

The move into cobalt partly reflects the rise of Asian battery companies, which already account for the bulk of the world’s production of lithium-ion batteries, the main type of battery used in most modern electrical devices, from smartphones to electric vehicles. Over 90 per cent of new lithium-ion battery manufacturing projects in the pipeline are expected to be in China.

进军钴矿开采在一定程度上反映出亚洲电池企业的崛起，全球很大一部分锂离子电池——从智能手机到电动汽车的多数现代电子设备普遍使用的电池类型——都由亚洲电池企业生产。在新规划的锂电池生产项目中，逾90%预计将落户中国。

The main exception is Tesla Motor’s giant new gigafactory under construction in Nevada. The company is ramping up production of its new Model 3 mass market car, aiming for 500,000 vehicles by 2018, though analysts question where it will source the raw materials for its batteries.

一个主要的例外是特斯拉在内华达州的在建新锂电池超级工厂。特斯拉正在提高新大众车型Model 3的产量，目标是到2018年年产50万辆，但分析师质疑它将从哪里获得制造电池所需要的原材料。

While battery makers are reducing the amount of cobalt they use in favour of other metals such as nickel or manganese, it is not expected to fall below 10 to 20 per cent in the most popular battery technologies for cars in the 2015-2020 timeframe, according to Adam Collins, an analyst at Liberum.

Liberum的分析师亚当?柯林斯(Adam Collins)表示，虽然电池制造商正在减少钴的使用量，而更多地采用镍、锰等其他金属，但在2015至2020年期间，在最受欢迎的汽车电池技术中，钴所占比例预计不会下降至10%至20%以下。

Belgium-based Umicore, which supplies cathode materials to major battery makers, said last month it would triple production of nickel-manganese-cobalt materials at its plants in South Korea and China over the next three years. That was confirmation the NMC cathode is “the technology of choice for the vast majority of platforms”, the company’s CEO Marc Grynberg said.

为大型电池制造商提供阴极材料、总部位于比利时的Umicore公司上月表示，将在未来3年将其韩国和中国工厂的镍锰钴合金材料产量提高2倍。该公司首席执行官马克?格林贝格(Marc Grynberg)表示，这相当于确认镍锰钴阴极材料为“绝大多数平台的首选技术”。

“This is unlikely to change in the near future and the technology road map shows NMC as having great potential to enable batteries to reach the car manufacturers’ target in terms of both driving range and system costs,” he said.

他说：“这不大可能在不久的将来发生变化，技术发展蓝图显示，镍锰钴材料有巨大的潜力，能够让电池在汽车行驶里程和系统成本两项上都达到汽车制造商的目标。”

Still, there are some versions of the lithium-ion battery, such as the lithium iron phosphate technology, that does not use any cobalt. But while such batteries are safer, analysts say they lack the energy density of other lithium-ion technologies, limiting their uses.

不过，还有一些其他类型的锂离子电池——如磷酸锂铁技术——不使用任何钴原料。虽然此类电池更安全，但分析人士表示，由于达不到其他锂离子技术的储能密度，它们的应用受到了限制。

“Though we don’t believe the narrative that there is a cobalt crisis,” said Chris Berry, an analyst at House Mountain Partners in New York. “We do see higher looming cobalt prices as China plays the ‘long game’ to dominate the cobalt supply chain.”

“虽然我们不认为钴供应出现了危机，”纽约House Mountain Partners的分析师克里斯?贝里(Chris Berry)说，“但随着中国长远布局以主导钴的供应链，钴价肯定会出现上涨。”