China puts new regulations on rare earths

China released new interim measures Friday, tightening controls on mining and processing of rare earths that are used in many high-tech products, including electric vehicles, smartphones, and fighter jets.

The rules released Friday by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology apply both to rare earths originating in China and those that are sent to China for refining.

They require companies to comply with quotas for various minerals. Companies must have government approval to deal with rare earths and must accurately report the amount of rare earths products being handled. Violators will face legal penalties and also have their quotas for rare earths reduced.

The 17 rare-earths elements, including such minerals as germanium, gallium, and titanium, aren’t actually rare. But they are hard to find in a high enough concentration to make mining them worth the investment. China has been gradually tightening restrictions on exports of such materials, partly in response to controls imposed by the United States on its access to American advanced technology.

In April, just after US President Donald Trump announced a raft of tariffs on dozens of US trading partners, Beijing announced permitting requirements for seven more rare earths: samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium, citing the need to “better safeguard national security and interests and to fulfil global duties of non-proliferation”.

Those limits raised worries that manufacturers in the United States and elsewhere would run short of vital materials needed for production, an issue in China-US trade talks. In response to US concessions on access to computer chip design software and jet engines, Beijing announced in June that it was speeding up approvals of rare-earths exports.

In July, China’s Ministry of State Security said it was cracking down on alleged smuggling of rare-earths materials that it said threatened national security, indicating that Beijing was moving to exert more control.

Over the past several decades, China has come to dominate rare-earths processing. It now supplies nearly 90 per cent of the world’s rare earths even though it mines only about 70 per cent of such materials.

China holds nearly half of the world’s known reserves of rare earths, but it also imports significant amounts of rare earths from neighbouring Myanmar for processing and export.

Since it controls technologies used for refining rare-earths elements and has banned exporting that know-how, China holds a near-monopoly on smelting and separating them.

In 2024, the United States obtained 70 per cent of the rare earths it used from China, 13 per cent from Malaysia, 6 per cent from Japan, and 5 per cent from Estonia. Some of the elements obtained from non-Chinese intermediate sources came from mineral concentrates processed in China and Australia, according to the US Geologic Survey.

The impact of the new rules on rare earths trade is unclear.

China has agreed to issue some permits for rare-earths exports but not for military uses, and much uncertainty remains about their supply.

The rules released Friday spell out tighter controls on licensing of companies dealing in rare earths and centralised controls on mining, exports, and processing. They also impose more stringent environmental standards for the industry.

Trump has made it a priority to try to reduce American reliance on China for rare earths while pushing for Beijing to ease its controls.

China has opted to dial up or down the approval process as needed while tightening overall controls on the industry.

The new regulations don’t spell out the quotas for production and export or specific rare-earths elements but strongly suggest that Beijing is serious about exerting stronger control over the industry.

– AP