China mines 69.2%. It makes about 94% of powerful magnets.

USGS reports Chinese reserves of roughly 44 million tonnes of rare-earth oxide. 1 That total cannot be converted into mine life by dividing it by annual output because the products, recoveries and viable ore differ. It also does not explain why a disruption in one Chinese licence office can interrupt an automotive line abroad.

The imbalance opens at the refinery because China mines about 60 percent of the magnet rare earth basket, covering the light pair NdPr and the heavy pair DyTb. 2 Refining reaches 91 percent, far above the country's share at the mine. 2 Imported ore flows into Chinese conversion capacity and returns to buyers as a higher-value oxide or metal.

Chinese factories widen the gap again by supplying about 94 percent of sintered permanent magnets. 2 Magnet applications account for roughly 95 percent of rare earth consumption by value. 2 A tonne of mixed concentrate is not interchangeable with a few kilograms of material approved for use inside a traction motor. Customers also need stable chemistry and repeatable magnetic performance, which is why new entrants spend years on samples before they win a serious order.

Low input costs help, but the industrial cluster does more work than cheap power alone because separation plants sit near metal makers. Magnet firms can draw on experienced engineers, then test products against a huge domestic market for vehicles and industrial motors. 2 A rival mine can open in one jurisdiction and still send its concentrate into that network because the next four steps are missing at home.

The revealing gap is 60 percent at the mine and 91 percent at the refinery. 2

EarthRarest analysis of IEA supply-chain data

Beijing's April 2025 order put seven elements and related products under export licensing. 4 Dysprosium and terbium were included alongside selected permanent-magnet products, although the notice did not announce a universal ban. Exporters instead had to identify the product and customer, which gave the state a way to slow sensitive cargo without closing every commercial channel.

The October 2025 package reached further: one rule would have captured some foreign-made products containing at least 0.1 percent China-origin controlled rare earth value. 5 A companion measure covered specified mining and separation technology; the rule also reached magnet know-how. 6 Manufacturers outside China read that as an attempt to export Chinese jurisdiction along with the material.

China suspended those October rules through 10 November 2026, while the April licensing system remained active, a distinction that broad headlines often lost. 7 Aggregate rare earth exports still rose to about 62,600 tonnes in 2025. 15 Critical controlled-element flows remained much tighter, leaving European dysprosium and terbium prices at multiples of Chinese domestic quotes in early 2026. 3

Targeted restrictions became more visible during 2026, when authorities tightened dual-use exports to Japanese military users in January. 8 Eight US entities were added to a restricted list in June, including MP Materials and USA Rare Earth. 9 Those decisions showed how Beijing could sort customers without closing every commercial channel. A separate July action named European defence and advanced-materials organizations, extending the same method beyond Asia and the United States. 10

Chinese mines do not supply every kilogram that Chinese refiners process. Myanmar accounted for about 45 percent of globally mined heavy rare earths in 2024, according to the IEA. 19 Much of that material crosses into China as mixed feed rich in dysprosium and terbium.

The Kachin Independence Army took control of the main mining belt late in 2024. Chinese imports from Myanmar then fell 89 percent from a year earlier in February 2025. 20 Inventories and alternative feed kept Chinese plants running, yet the episode exposed a strange reversal: the world's dominant refiner can be short of the mud entering its own front gate.

Mining in northern Myanmar carries a cost that rarely appears in magnet brochures. UN investigators identified 302 new mining sites in Kachin State since 2021. 21 The same report describes toxic pollution and a conflict economy largely feeding Chinese demand. A clean audit at a later factory cannot erase the origin of an untraceable mixed carbonate at the mine.

Another feed route narrowed when MP Materials stopped selling Mountain Pass products to China in July 2025. 22 China still has domestic light-rare-earth scale and growing exploration, but high-temperature magnets need the heavy elements in small, unforgiving doses. Myanmar therefore remains both a supply risk for China and a human story for anyone following the race beyond company presentations.

The State Council's rare earth regulations took effect in October 2024 and cover mining through recycling. 11 Resources remain state-owned, while companies must feed product movements into a traceability system that turns industrial policy into a production database.

Rules issued in July 2025 brought imported feed and monazite into the smelting-separation quota framework; only designated enterprises can mine or separate material. 12 They report monthly output and product flow, and a violation can cut the following year's allocation.

China's 2024 mining quota reached 270,000 tonnes, the upper boundary for designated producers that year. 13 The separation quota sat lower at 254,000 tonnes for the same year. 13 Reuters found that volumes for the first 2025 allocation were circulated privately instead of being published. 13 The official record now offers less public quota detail than it did a few years ago, which complicates the modelling of a market this important.

Corporate disclosure has also tightened: China Northern Rare Earth's 2025 annual report withheld its main published breakdown of physical products under national or commercial secrecy provisions. 15 The same filing showed higher revenue and record operations, but the missing detail makes it harder to separate real scarcity from administrative delay. Missing product data directly changes how traders and governments price risk.

China's national plan for 2026 through 2030 calls for maintaining advantages in rare earths and building strategic industrial bases. 14 The wording matters because the policy target is not simply more ore. It supports the stages that turn a mineral advantage into pricing power and products accepted by customers.

A green smelting upgrade by China Northern Rare Earth is capped at RMB 7.799 billion. 15 Phase one was connected to production when the company filed its annual report, while phase two was under construction. The staged expansion lets one phase run while the next is built inside the same cluster. JL MAG ended 2025 with 40,000 tonnes of designed annual magnet capacity. 16 Its Baotou expansion is intended to lift the company total to 60,000 tonnes by the end of 2027. 16

Rising demand gives those plants somewhere to run, with IEA expecting magnet-rare-earth consumption to grow by about one third by 2030 under stated policies. 2 Projects outside the dominant producer look stronger at the mine than at the factory. Announced diversified mining capacity exceeds 50,000 tonnes by 2035. 3 Metal, alloy and magnet projects after mining, together with magnet plants, amount to only about 18,000 tonnes. 3

The likely outcome is a smaller Chinese mine share without a matching loss of conversion control. Recycling and heavy-rare-earth-saving magnet recipes can soften exposure, especially as scrap volumes grow. Qualification speed remains stubborn because a newly pressed magnet still has to earn its place inside an automaker's warranty.