China and Afghanistan have a small common border......
I thought it was Bolivia... from wiki -
As of 2015, most of the world's lithium production is in South America, where lithium-containing brine is extracted from underground pools and concentrated by solar evaporation. The standard extraction technique is to evaporate water from brine. Each batch takes from 18 to 24 months.
Afghanistan’s lithium has NOT BEEN TAPPED because of the War, but it’s huge. Whoever gets final control of Afghanistan will control world lithium markets..................