In this new panorama, the United States and Europe are at a disadvantage, as China controls as much as 90% of the global trade in rare earths. This is largely because it has been quietly but continuously promoting the extraction and refining of these raw materials for decades. As early as the 1950s China began mining the Bayan Obo deposit in Inner Mongolia, which is now the world’s largest rare earth mine. By the 1990s it had significantly increased its investments to become the world leader in production and refining.
Today, the PRC extracts these raw materials both within its own borders and in other countries, especially in Africa, though much of the refining is still done in China itself.
