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In June 2025, a number of Indian companies filed nearly 30 rare earth import license applications to China. Commerce Minister Pjoush Goyal even bluntly stated in the parliament that they must communicate with China to stabilize supply.
This scene is puzzling: India clearly holds 6.9 million tons of rare earth reserves, and Russia also has 10 million tons. Why did the industries of the two countries panic when China tightened exports?
If we only look at the reserve ranking, the global rare earth pattern seems to be very balanced: Brazil 21 million tons, India 6.9 million tons, Russia 10 million tons, and Australia 5.7 million tons.
However, when the production data is superimposed, the gap instantly widens. In 2024, the total global rare earth production will be 390,000 tons, and China will monopolize 270,000 tons, accounting for 69%.
Russia's output accounts for only 1% of the world, only a few thousand tons of exports throughout the year, India is worse, even specific production data are difficult to find, only imports can fill the demand.
This set of comparisons exposes the core logic of the rare earth industry. Reserves are only paper wealth. Only when they can be dug up, processed well, and used in key links of the industrial chain can they really have the right to speak.
Russia's 10 million tons of reserves are concentrated in Siberia and the Far East TomTor mining field, which is rich in uranium and uranium, is the core magnetic raw material needed for electric vehicle engines, wind turbines, theoretically can support the Russian rare-earth industry.
However, from the planned production in 2020 to 2025, the project dragged on for five years, and it was not until Rosneft Oil Giant took over the offer that construction finally started. Western sanctions blocked the capital chain and even the high-end equipment needed for mining could not be entered.
India's 6.9 million tons of reserves are also problematic. These resources are mainly hidden in coastal placer deposits in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. The rare earth oxide content of monazite deposits is as high as 58%. The National Institute of Marine Minerals of India has specially confirmed that 7,000 kilometers of beaches along the coast have development potential.
In the actual mining, the coastal ecological protection regulations are strict, the element of uranium accompanied by the sandmine needs special equipment separation, India is lacking in technology and lack of funds, in the end, it can only look at the resources lying on the sea, and the electric vehicles and electronics industry must also rely on China's supply.
India's media always loves the world's fifth rare earth reserve, but rarely mentions the shortcomings of its own industry, India's technology is caught in the neck, of the world's 17 rare earth elements have been discovered, India can only handle 4 of them.
And the purity of the product does not meet the high-end demand, such as the need of magnets for electrical vehicle engines, local enterprises in India can not make qualified products, only imported from China.
In fiscal year 2024, India's light is importing rare-earth magnets for $200 million, a total of 5.3748 million tons, most of which are used in domestic electric vehicle factories and electronics production lines.
And more difficult is the breakdown of the industrial chain, India Rare Earth Limited is the industry's main force, but can only produce crude mines, want to process into available rare earth oxides, and have to be shipped to other countries to process.
Some media once disclosed an embarrassing detail. After tracing the source of some rare earth magnets imported by India from Japan, it was found that the raw materials were actually local placer deposits in India. After a circle, the cost not only doubled, but it also depended on the faces of others.
In order to break up, India has also tried to find international cooperation, in June 2025 announced the suspension of Japanese rare-earth exports of self-assurance resources, also plans to jointly produce magnets with Japan and Korea, IREL also actively linked overseas companies to seek technical support.
However, these actions have had little effect. Japan and South Korea themselves also rely on China's rare earth processing technology, and cooperation can only solve some low-end needs.
Suspension of exports to Japan is more like a gesture operation. After all, India itself cannot process minerals into finished products. Suspension of exports will cut off sales of its own rough ore.
Until the second half of 2025, China approved partial import permits, and cargo ships left the port, the Indian factory finally breathed.
And Russia's rare-earth trouble, more complex than India, TomTor minerals are known in the industry as rare-earth minerals, only the detected uranium and uranium reserves, can produce hundreds of thousands of tons of high-end magnets.
Putin has publicly stated that Russia's rare-earth reserves outperform Ukraine several times, and in 2023, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources has given a figure of 28.7 million tons of rare-earth metals reserves, but these advantages, all offset by geoconflict and sanctions.
The Tomtor project, which Russia originally planned to put into operation in 2020, was affected by sanctions and had to be shelved. During this period, Russia tried to find cooperation from many parties. In February 2025, it even allowed sovereign wealth funds to connect with American companies in an attempt to circumvent sanctions to advance the project. As a result, the Trump team was afraid of being accused of linking Russia and did not dare to make a decision.
It was not until 2025 that Rosneft injected funds after taking over the project that the project finally started, but the progress was still slow because the large-scale mineral processing equipment and separation technology needed for mining relied on imports. Sanctions doubled the cost of equipment procurement, and the construction period could only be delayed again and again.
But Russia’s goal is clear, hoping to sevenfold its rare earth output by 2030, from a few thousand tons to 50,000 tons, while reducing its import dependence from 75% to 45%.
But the reality is that by 2024, Russia's production of rare earth will account for only 1% of the world, not even the demand of its own military and new energy industries, let alone exports.
The Donbas Kuangqu mining area was thrown into chaos due to war. Exploration teams could not enter and equipment could not be transported. The rare earth resources that could have been replenished had completely become sleeping assets.
In order to circumvent, Russia also plans to build a magnetic material industrial park, aiming at the production of titanium and titanium permanent magnets, without advanced separation technology, and the industrial park can only be stopped in the planning phase.
However, the advantage of our rare earths in China has never been based solely on its large reserves. As early as the 1950s, China began to lay out the rare earth industry, from the exploration of the Baiyunebo Mine in Inner Mongolia to the development of the heavy rare earth mines in Liangshan, Sichuan and Ganzhou, Jiangxi. The entire industrial chain of "exploration-mining-separation-application" has been gradually established.
The technical barriers of China's processing links are China's core baseline, and the solvent extraction method developed by the team of Xi Jinping academicians has allowed China to breakthroughs in the field of rare earth separation.
Not only can it accurately separate 17 rare earth elements, it can also reduce the separation cost by 70%, and increase the wastewater recovery rate to more than 95%.
Currently, 99% of the world's heavy rare earth separation work is completed in China. Even if other countries can dig out raw ore, it will have to be transported to China and processed into usable oxides or metals.
In 2024, the market value of China's rare earth industry will exceed 100 billion yuan. The Nd-Fe-B magnets in BYD batteries and the gallium element required by Huawei chips are all the result of the support of the local rare earth industry chain, and there is no need to rely on external supplies at all.
In April 2025, China's Ministry of Commerce announced that it would strengthen licensing review of seven rare earth elements and magnets, including samarium, gadolinium, terbium, and dysprosium. This action directly shook the global supply chain.
U.S. enterprises are called hardly, some European wind power plants are stopped due to lack of magnetic materials, and India is more eager to submit import applications.
This is not a "monopoly", but a reflection of the right to speak in the industrial chain. China has long jumped out of the low-end model of "selling raw ore" and embedded rare earths into high-end industries such as new energy, 5G, and military industry. Export controls are only to protect local industrial security.
Looking back at the rare earth gap in China and Russia, it is not whose mine is more, but who wants to understand how rare earth should be used.
Russia has good mines but is bound by sanctions, India is guarding sand mines but lacks technology and lack of funding, and China has begun to chew technology and build industrial chains since the 1950s, only to turn the 44 million tons of reserves into a real voice.
Now the world is robbing rare earth, and the United States wants to find alternative resources from Ukraine and Russia, but it is difficult to land because of war and sanctions.
Europe supports Australia's Lynas expansion, can scale only China's 1 / 10, India is still relying on imports, and the domestic plan is slowly moving forward.
In the next ten years, rare earths will remain the key to the transformation of new energy. Without them, electric vehicle motors cannot be turned, wind power blades cannot be built, and 5G base stations will be difficult to implement.
China's advantage lies not only in its output and technology, but also in its early formation of a closed loop from green mining to high-end applications to recycling. This is the core that other countries cannot catch up with in the short term.
But China has always been willing to work with all countries to safeguard the stability of the rare earth industry chain, after all, we have always understood that the better future of mankind cannot depend on only one country.
Source of information
Production accounts for 70% of the world!