One of many singular options of Baotou, an industrial metropolis of two million individuals in Interior Mongolia, is a 10-square-kilometer (4-square-mile) lake that’s among the many most polluted on this planet. The unreal lake, referred to by the identify of the dam related to it, Weikuang Dam (or Baogang Tailings Dam), has for many years collected the effluent from minerals processing for China’s globally dominant iron, metal, and rare-earths industries.
Constructed within the late Fifties, the lake comprises a extremely poisonous stew of commercial chemical substances with substantial quantities of radioactive thorium, the latter ensuing primarily from the processing of monazite ores for rare earths. China has since enormously tightened its environmental laws and restrictions on mining and minerals processing. For instance, largely due to the environmental catastrophe that’s Weikuang Dam, the nation doesn’t allow the event or operation of stand-alone monazite mines—that’s, mines the place nothing is mined besides monazite ore.
Now, with industrialized nations in North America, Asia, and Europe spending billions to shore up their rare-earths provide chains, and relying on monazite to assist them do it, China’s historical past and experiences with monazite supply vital classes.
Monazite ore is a pillar of China’s rare-earths trade as a result of it’s a prime supply of some much less widespread however extraordinarily vital rare-earth parts, notably dysprosium, terbium, yttrium, and erbium. The nation mines and processes huge portions of monazite ore; it additionally imports large quantities of monazite ore for processing.
Many of the domestically mined monazite ore comes from a single mine: the mammoth Bayan Obo complicated, 150 kilometers north of Baotou in Interior Mongolia. Bayan Obo, which is primarily an iron-ore mine, additionally occurs to comprise the biggest identified rare-earth deposit on this planet. It’s the supply of almost half of all of the rare-earth ore mined on the planet in a typical yr. Many of the rare-earth ore mined at Bayan Obo is a sort known as bastnaesite; it’s the mining of that bastnaesite that makes it authorized to mine monazite ore at Bayan Obo as effectively.
All informed, ore from Bayan Obo was used to supply 170,000 tonnes of rare-earth metallic final yr, in line with David Merriman, analysis director on the minerals intelligence agency Project Blue. Roughly 30 to 40 percent of the rare-earth ore mined at Bayan Obo is monazite. That quantity alone can be sufficient to make China the world’s largest processor of monazite for rare earths.
China’s 2025 Monazite Imports Topped 70,000 Tonnes
However a extra detailed image of China’s curiosity in monazite emerges when you think about the nation’s imports of the ore. Final yr they amounted to greater than 70,000 tonnes, says Thomas Kruemmer, a Singapore-based consultant on minerals and metals. That determine turns into extra spectacular when you think about the distinctive challenges of delivery monazite by sea. Due to its radioactivity, concentrated monazite ore is classed as Class 7 harmful cargo below the Worldwide Maritime Harmful Items Code. Meaning, Kruemmer notes, that the ore might be imported via solely 4 ports in China.
As well as, importation of some sorts of monazite into China is meant to undergo a three way partnership consisting of the China National Nuclear Corp. and Shenghe Resources, that are at the very least partly state-owned. However numerous imported monazite doesn’t undergo these organizations, notes Merriman. That’s as a result of heavy mineral sands, which can comprise roughly 2 or 3 p.c monazite by weight, are usually not topic to the identical import controls as concentrated monazite ore. So firms import the heavy mineral sands; separate out numerous worthwhile concentrates, together with the monazite mineral focus; after which course of the monazite focus to get better the uncommon earths.
China has recently stepped up its efforts to safe rare-earth ore around the globe. One motive, says Kruemmer, is solely to make up for just lately misplaced provides. In 2025, the U.S. authorities invested US $400 million in MP Supplies, which operates the Mountain Pass mine and processing facility in California. The deal put an finish to longstanding contracts below which MP Supplies had been promoting tens of 1000’s of tonnes of rare-earth focus yearly to a buying and selling affiliate of Shenghe Sources.
However different Westerners speculate that China has strategic causes for stepping up its efforts to amass heavy mineral sands or different rare-earth belongings overseas. By locking down rights to deposits or initiatives overseas, Chinese language organizations are making them unavailable to non-Chinese language builders, in line with this reasoning.
Merriman factors out that your view of those actions largely depends upon the place you sit. The U.S. authorities just lately made a conditional mortgage dedication of as much as $725 million to U.S. monazite processor Vitality Fuels, which has been aggressively securing substantial monazite provides in Australia, Brazil, and Madagascar. To a Chinese language observer, these strikes in all probability look moderately strategic.
China, in the meantime, is doing what it has been doing for many years. “China’s enjoying its sport,” says Merriman.
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