Abstract: Critical minerals are indispensable resources for sustaining technological and economic development and safeguarding country security. It is vital for China to accurately understand the global competition status of critical minerals so as to formulate targeted strategies in response. Since the global financial crisis in 2008, the rapid development of strategic emerging industries has triggered a new wave of critical minerals competition since the end of the Cold War, which is characterized by five key trends: firstly, competition has expanded from mineral resources in upstream to the entire industrial chain; secondly, resource-abundant countries, consuming countries, and processing countries are reorganizing into different competitive blocs; thirdly, global mineral exploration investments are increasingly risk-averse, with mining enterprises adopting more conservative investment preferences; fourthly, developed countries are prioritizing domestic mineral investments, as evidenced by rising mineral exploration budgets and merger scales in the U.S., Canada, and Australia; and fifthly, resource-host countries are broadening their demands, shifting from mere earning export benefits to encompassing industry development, environmental protection, livelihood improvement, and international discourse power enhancement. Additionally, China’s international cooperation on critical minerals also faces three major challenges: the U.S. and Western countries’ efforts to promote the “de-Sinicization” of critical minerals supply chains, the “stigmatization” of Chinese mining enterprises and the resurgence of “resource nationalism”. It is recommended to responding to the above challenges from three aspects: strengthening resource-industry cooperation with neighboring countries, better telling China’s green mining stories, and innovating international cooperation mechanisms for critical minerals. Such efforts will help build more resilient critical minerals supply chains, further to provide solid energy and resource guarantees for promoting high-quality domestic economic development and thus building a socialist modern power in an all-round way.