The Chinese government agencies weren't investigating lithium producers for no reason. The lithium production from lepidolite is damaging the environment (waste to ore ratio of 20:1). Why would the government subsidize every small company? The big Chinese producers are looking abroad to buy higher quality assets. It would be much smarter for the government to help companies with this strategy, instead of helping small companies to mine low quality deposits at home, that barely break even at todays prices or are even unprofitable. China is still a "free" market economy to some extent. The government doesn't plan local lithium production in China in detail. First it's the companies who are making the decision to develop a new project or not and the government has then to approve it. The two biggest Chinese lithium producers Gangfeng and Tianqi are both publicly traded companies.
