Buried in the reddish soil of southern China lies latent power: one of the largest clusters of crucial rare earth elements is being mined 24 hours a day by a secretive and heavily guarded industry.
The hills of Jiangxi province are home to most of China’s rare earth mines. The materials are used in a wide range of products, including smartphones and missile guidance technology.
The booming industry is closely protected by Chinese authorities and media access is rarely granted.
During a rare visit to the region last month, AFP journalists were followed and tailed by minders who refused to identify themselves. Companies did not accept requests for interviews.
Business is booming: The number of rare earth processing points in China, observed by the US Geological Survey, increased from 117 in 2010 to 2,057 in 2017. Most of the 3,085 recorded nationwide by the USGS today are clustered in the hills of Jiangxi.
Locals there told AFP that a rare earth mine was in almost constant operation.
“It’s busy 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said a resident of Banshi town.
Nearby, construction work began today on a major new industrial park with facilities including rare earth processing sites.
The bustling mining region is the culmination of a decades-long effort by Beijing to build up its power in the strategic sector.
These efforts paid off this year, with a tentative truce in a trade war with the United States as China relaxed strict export controls on rare earths.
Washington is now rushing to set up alternative supply chains, but experts warn such efforts will take years.
In a sign of growing concern among other Western governments, the European Union this month announced new measures to reduce the bloc’s dependence on China to secure crucial minerals.
The bloc said it would set aside almost three billion euros ($3.5 billion) to support projects in mining, refining and recycling of vital materials, and proposed the creation of an EU supply hub: the European Center for Critical Raw Materials.
– Heavy metal –
“The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths,” former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said in a 1992 speech.
Since then, China has leveraged its natural reserves – the largest of any country – to dominate processing and innovation in this field.
The country’s rare earths industry is concentrated in two major hubs.
One of these is the Bayan Obo mining district in the Inner Mongolia region, on the edge of the Gobi Desert, which is rich in ‘light’ rare earth metals used for magnets in everyday objects.
The other hub, around the city of Ganzhou in Jiangxi, specializes in ‘heavy’ rare earths – harder to extract but more valuable for their use in heat-resistant magnets, fighter jet engines, missile guidance systems and lasers.
The rugged hills surrounding Ganzhou are home to the world’s largest mining and processing operations of the strategic ‘heavy’ elements including dysprosium, yttrium and terbium.
And in the provincial-level Longnan District alone, USGS counted 886 such sites, accounting for 31.5 percent of Jiangxi’s total.
An AFP team in Longnan spotted rows of large rare earth processing factories in an industrial district adjacent to the dense number of mining sites.
– ‘Move mountains’ –
Heavy rare earth elements are formed over millions of years as rainfall weathers igneous rocks, breaking them down and leaving elements concentrated at the surface.
Jiangxi’s gentle slopes, high rainfall and natural stone make it an excellent location for such features.
Mining methods in the region have evolved over the decades.
Authorities have criticized highly destructive approaches since early 2010 and cracked down on what they call “chaotic extraction.”
One method – called “moving mountains” – was described by China’s top industry and technology regulator in 2015 as “first cutting down trees, then removing weeds, and finally removing topsoil, causing irreparable damage.”
Unlicensed mining has drastically reduced over time.
Large signs in rural areas now warn against illegal mining of rare earth metals. Others offer cash rewards for reporting such actions.
The industry is largely consolidated into two huge state-owned enterprises.
On a Ganzhou street dubbed “Rare Earth Avenue,” construction workers were busy completing a massive new headquarters for one of those giants, the China Rare Earth Group.
But the province’s hills still bear the scars of bygone mining practices, with bare patches of red earth visible where vegetation struggles to regrow.
Beetles block mining of Europe’s largest rare earth deposit
Ulefoss, Norway (AFP) December 20, 2025 – As Europe tries to curb its dependence on China for rare earths, plans to mine the continent’s largest deposit have hit a roadblock over fears that mining operations could harm endangered beetles, mosses and mushrooms.
A two-hour drive southwest of Oslo, in the former mining community of Ulefoss, home to 2,000 people, lies the Fensfeltet treasure: an estimated 8.8 million tons of rare earth elements.
These elements, used to make magnets crucial to the automotive, electronics and defense industries, have been defined as critical raw materials by the European Union.
“You have rare earths in your pocket if you carry a smartphone,” said Tor Espen Simonsen, a local official at Rare Earths Norway, the company that owns the extraction rights.
“You’re driving rare earths when you’re behind the wheel of an electric car, and you need rare earths to make defense equipment like F-35 jets,” he added.
“Today, European industry imports almost all the rare earth metals it needs – 98 percent – from a single country: China,” he added.
“We are therefore in a situation where Europe has to procure more of these raw materials itself,” he said.
In its Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), aimed at securing European supplies, the EU has set a target for at least 10 percent of its needs to be sourced within the bloc by 2030.
No rare earth metals are currently mined in Europe.
– ‘Rush slowly’ –
Due to environmental concerns, Rare Earths Norway has already been forced to postpone its schedule. Now it aims to start mining in the first half of the 2030s.
The so-called “invisible mine” project aims to limit the mine’s carbon footprint. It plans to use underground extraction and crushing – as opposed to an open-pit mine – and reinject much of the mining residue.
But the location of the mineral processing park, where underground mined ore would be processed and pre-processed, has posed a problem.
The company planned to transport the minerals on an underground conveyor belt that emerged above ground behind a hill, in an area out of sight of the city and largely covered by ancient natural forests, rich in biodiversity.
But experts who examined the site found 78 species of fauna and flora on Norway’s ‘red list’ – species that are at varying degrees of risk of extinction. These included saproxylic beetles (which depend on dead wood), wych elms, common ash trees, 40 species of mushrooms and various mosses.
As a result, the provincial governor formally opposed the site during a recent consultation process.
Adding to the concerns was the fact that the disposal of waste rock would take place within a protected water system.
“We need to start mining as soon as possible so that we can bypass polluting value chains from China,” said Martin Molvaer, an advisor at Bellona, a Norwegian technology-focused environmental NGO.
“But things cannot move so fast that we destroy a large part of nature in the process: we must therefore move slowly,” he said.
– ‘Lesser of two evils’ –
Faced with such objections, the municipality was forced to revise the plans and take a closer look at alternative locations for the above-ground part of the mine.
Although a less environmentally sensitive zone still exists, neither the mining developers nor the local population are in favor of it.
“We accept that we will have to sacrifice a significant part of our nature,” said Mayor Linda Thorstensen.
“It comes down to choosing the lesser of two evils.”
Thorstensen supports the mining project, as the small town has provided employment for decades and young people are moving elsewhere. It’s “a new adventure,” she said.
“Many people live outside the labor market, many receive social benefits or disability pensions. So we need jobs and opportunities,” she said.
In the almost empty streets of Ulefoss, locals were cautiously optimistic.
“We want a dynamic that allows us to become rich so that the community benefits. We need money and more residents,” Inger Norendal, a 70-year-old retired teacher, told AFP.
“But mining obviously also has its disadvantages.”
