China on Wednesday began public consultation on new regulations designed to protect its domestic rare earth industry, a sector where Beijing has previously weaponized its dominance via export controls and other restrictions.
The draft regulations were released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology late on Wednesday and touched on issues including quotas for mining, smelting and separating, as well as monitoring and enforcement.
The rules are the latest in a series of attempts to bring the globally critical sector under tighter state control. China already dictates output via a system of quotas and state-controlled companies.
Rare earths are a group of 17 minerals whose production China dominates, accounting for nearly 90% of global refined output.
In 2023, Beijing banned the export of technology to make rare earth magnets, adding it to an existing ban on technology to extract and separate the critical materials.
