By interrogating colonial legacies, structural violence and epistemological hierarchies, Southern Criminology foregrounds how environmental and social harms are embedded within global power relations and critiques the epistemological dominance of Global North perspectives that marginalise the lived experiences and structural conditions of the Global South. This study advances Southern Criminology by examining China’s expanding role in critical mineral extractivism—specifically lithium mining in Argentina and Zimbabwe—through a decolonial lens. Drawing on 633 governmental documents, policy papers, media reports and official press releases in Spanish, English and Chinese, the study analyses how Chinese and host-country elites shape regulatory transformations by legitimising extractive expansion while marginalising Indigenous rights and environmental protections. The analysis identifies three interrelated dynamics: (1) the environmental and social harms of Chinese-led extractivism and their criminogenic effects; (2) the transformation of postcolonial state formations through legal and institutional reforms that facilitate resource appropriation and (3) the reproduction of geopolitical, demographic and epistemic dominance through Unequal Ecological Exchange. Central to these processes is the deployment of neo-extractive development as a discursive and regulatory mechanism of epistemological violence, enabling neo-colonial forms of control under the guise of sustainable growth. The study demonstrates how lithium mining perpetuates colonial legacies, reinforces centre–periphery dependencies and intensifies ecological and social disorganisation in affected communities. By situating China’s Belt and Road Initiative within broader patterns of neo-extractivism, it calls for a nuanced, context-specific South–South analytical approach to confront emergent forms of green coloniality and authoritarian environmental governance shaping the Global South’s future.