Rare Earth: Production, Trade and Demand Original Research Article

Rare earth resources mining, processing, export for last 5 years in China and global market demand of rare earth have been reviewed in present paper. Being major provider of rare earth products in global market, rare earth industry in China has been much developed along with her economy development in recent years. The fast growth of rare earth industry caused a lot of problems including pollution, environment protection, etc. Chinese government has to take series measures, both economic and administrative, to restrict export of rare earth products in order to guarantee to meet needs for domestic market. Moreover, some rare earth plants, which could not meet requests of environment protection, or whose pollution is still serious, have to be closed completely. As a result of this, price of rare earth is rising up along with the cost of production and overhead. More important is that the impact, both mental and practical, has been resulted for importers and oversea end-users. There are two “domino effects” mainly: one is that some of new oversea rare earth deposits start to mine and some closed old deposits are re-mining again for making up the deficiency of rare earth in the market, another is that some of oversea end-users with their enterprises are urged to move into China.