Chuyên mục: Rare earths

Đất hiếm là khoáng sản chiến lược đặc biệt, không xuất khẩu thô

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

vneconomy.vn 11/12/2025

Luật sửa đổi, bổ sung một số điều của Luật Địa chất và khoáng sản khẳng định đất hiếm là khoáng sản chiến lược đặc biệt. Việc thăm dò, khai thác, chế biến phải được kiểm soát chặt chẽ, không xuất khẩu thô khoáng sản đất hiếm. Chỉ các doanh nghiệp, tổ chức được Nhà nước chỉ định hoặc cho phép mới được quyền thăm dò, khai thác, chế biến và sử dụng đất hiếm. Hoạt động chế biến sâu đất hiếm phải gắn với xây dựng hệ sinh thái công nghiệp hiện đại để nâng cao chuỗi giá trị trong nước…

Chỉ các doanh nghiệp, tổ chức được Nhà nước chỉ định hoặc cho phép mới được quyền thăm dò, khai thác, chế biến và sử dụng đất hiếm. Ảnh minh họa
Chỉ các doanh nghiệp, tổ chức được Nhà nước chỉ định hoặc cho phép mới được quyền thăm dò, khai thác, chế biến và sử dụng đất hiếm. Ảnh minh họa

Tiếp tục chương trình Kỳ họp thứ 10, ngày 11/12, Quốc hội biểu quyết thông qua Luật sửa đổi, bổ sung một số điều của Luật Địa chất và khoáng sản với đa số đại biểu có mặt tán thành.

Trước khi Quốc hội thông qua, Bộ trưởng Bộ Nông nghiệp và Môi trường Trần Đức Thắng, thừa ủy quyền của Thủ tướng Chính phủ báo cáo giải trình, tiếp thu, chỉnh lý dự thảo Luật sửa đổi, bổ sung một số điều của Luật Địa chất và khoáng sản. Theo đó, Chính phủ đã tiếp thu và phối hợp với các cơ quan có liên quan rà soát, chỉnh lý, hoàn thiện dự thảo về các vấn đề bảo đảm tính thống nhất, đồng bộ của hệ thống pháp luật, quy định đầy đủ các trường hợp chuyển tiếp và một số vấn đề cụ thể khác.

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The World’s Rare Earth Reserves

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

 visualcapitalist.com November 25, 2025

Voronoi graphic visualizing the world’s rare earth reserves.

Key Takeaways

  • China accounts for nearly half of global rare earth reserves (44M of 92M metric tons).
  • Brazil ranks second (21M tons), while the U.S. holds 1.9M tons—about 2% of the total.

Rare earth elements (REEs) are the backbone of modern technology, from EV motors and wind turbines to smartphones and precision-guided systems.

This map breaks down where the world’s known rare earth reserves are located in 2025, highlighting how concentrated they are across a handful of countries.

The distribution is highly uneven. China alone holds nearly half of the global total, followed by Brazil’s sizable deposits. By contrast, many advanced economies have limited reserves.

The data for this visualization comes from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

A Heavily Concentrated Reserve Base

China leads with 44.0 million metric tons, about 48% of the world total of 91.9 million metric tons. Brazil is a clear second at 21.0 million tons (23%), reflecting large ionic clay and hard-rock deposits that are still early in development.

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Exclusive: China-backed militia secures control of new rare earth mines in Myanmar

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

reuters.com By Naw Betty Han, Shoon Naing, Devjyot Ghoshal, Eleanor Whalley and Napat Wesshasartar

June 12, 20255:48 PM GMT+7Updated 5 days ago

United Wa State Army (UWSA) soldiers march during a media display in Pansang, Wa territory in northeast Myanmar

Item 1 of 4 United Wa State Army (UWSA) soldiers march during a media display in Pansang, Wa territory in northeast Myanmar, October 4, 2016. Picture taken on October 4, 2016. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun/File Photo

[1/4]United Wa State Army (UWSA) soldiers march during a media display in Pansang, Wa territory in northeast Myanmar, October 4, 2016. Picture taken on October 4, 2016. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

  • Summary
  • Beijing-backed UWSA protecting new rare earth mines in Shan state, sources say
  • Mines being run by Chinese-speaking operators
  • China relies on Myanmar for rare earth imports but had recently faced some supply challenges
  • Rare earths offer Beijing leverage in trade war with Washington

BANGKOK, June 12 (Reuters) – A Chinese-backed militia is protecting new rare earth mines in eastern Myanmar, according to four people familiar with the matter, as Beijing moves to secure control of the minerals it is wielding as a bargaining chip in its trade war with Washington.

China has a near-monopoly over the processing of heavy rare earths into magnets that power critical goods like wind turbines, medical devices and electric vehicles. But Beijing is heavily reliant on Myanmar for the rare earth metals and oxides needed to produce them: the war-torn country was the source of nearly half those imports in the first four months of this year, Chinese customs data show.

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Toxic runoff from Myanmar gold mines contaminates Thai rivers

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Toxic runoff from unregulated mines in Myanmar has sparked health and environmental concerns, across the border in Thailand.

Thai authorities have detected levels of arsenic nearly five times above acceptable limits. Meanwhile, local fishermen and residents are complaining of falling incomes and expressing food safety concerns.

Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng reports from Bangkok, Thailand.

Rare earth rush in Myanmar blamed for toxic river spillover into Thailand

9 Jun 2025
 
    • Water tests from the Kok and Sai rivers near Thailand’s border with Myanmar have revealed elevated arsenic levels, leading Thai officials to warn citizens to avoid contact with river water.
    • The pollution is widely believed to be linked to unregulated mining in Myanmar’s Shan state.
    • Extraction of gold in Shan State has surged in the years since the 2021 military coup in Myanmar; more recently, mounting evidence suggests rare earth mining is also expanding across the state.
    • Elevated arsenic levels have also been found at testing points in the Mekong, which is fed by both the Kok and Sai rivers.

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Power scramble – 3 parts

~ Phạm Thu Hương ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Can Anyone Challenge China’s Near Monopoly On Metals Powering Our Tech? – Part 1/3 | Power Scramble


CNA Insider – 3-11, 2023

We want the newest gadgets, the most advanced electric vehicles, and a fully electrified future, but behind all of that is a class of critical metals: rare earths. These are the only metals in the world, to date, that can be used to create powerful and portable magnets, essential to everything from EVs to wind turbines. So why the worry? For decades, China has maintained an iron grip on the entire supply chain for rare earths. Today, demand is skyrocketing for rare earths, because the world is racing to electrify just about every part of our lives. Kartik Kuna is the first outsider to gain filming access to a particular magnet factory in Dongguan, China – one of many Chinese factories that are producing a huge majority of the world’s rare earth magnets. Just why is it so hard to outcompete China in this space? Kartik also witnesses for himself a startling statistic – China is building up offshore wind power capacity at breakneck pace… all of which requires rare earths. Tiếp tục đọc “Power scramble – 3 parts” →

Rare Earth Prices Skyrocket Following Burmese Mining Suspension

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

OILPRICE.COM By Metal Miner – Oct 08, 2023, 10:00 AM CDT

  • Myanmar’s Kachin State, supplying 38% of China’s rare earth imports, halted mining, causing an immediate spike in global prices.
  • The long-term effects of this suspension might lead to scarcity, illicit mining, and environmental issues in the region.
  • China’s economic slowdown combined with geopolitical risks highlights the need for diversified sourcing in the rare earth market.

The Rare Earths MMI (Monthly Metals Index) witnessed yet another steep increase month-over-month. Indeed, supply disruptions remain a massive concern in the rare earths industry, so rare earth magnets and other materials witnessed renewed bullish strength across the board over recent months.

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.595.0_en.html#goog_2062367381

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CFR – Critical Minerals and China

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ Bình luận về bài viết này
The Water’s Edge April 28, 2023
The President’s Inbox Recap: Critical Minerals and China

by Michelle Kurilla, Guest Contributor



The digging of raw nickel ore near Sorowako, Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, on January 8, 2014.
REUTERS/Yusuf Ahmad

The latest episode of The President’s Inbox is live, and we’ve revived the practice of posting a weekly episode recap on The Water’s Edge.  This week, Jim sat down with Morgan Bazilian, the Director of the Payne Institute and a professor of public policy at the Colorado School of Mines. They discussed the role of critical minerals in geopolitical competition with China.

Here are four takeaways from the conversation:

1. Critical minerals are essential for the green energy transition. Lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and other minerals are critical to building the batteries, electrical grids, and solar facilities needed to move away from fossil fuels. Demand for lithium alone is predicted to increase thirteen-fold by 2040 and could become a sticking point in the green energy transition. Nor is demand for critical minerals limited to the energy sector; they’re widely used to manufacture everything from smartphones to advanced weaponry.

2. China dominates the critical mineral supply chain. A few countries sit atop vast mineral reserves. Seventy-five percent of the world’s known lithium reserves are found in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. The Democratic Republic of the Congo possess more than half the world’s cobalt reserves. Indonesia has more than 20 percent of the world’s nickel reserves. Regardless of where mines might be located, China owns or finances many of them. As recently as 2020, China owned and financed fifteen of the nineteen cobalt mines in the DROC. China also dominates the refining process. It controls 65 percent of cobalt refining, nearly 60 percent of the lithium refining, and as much as 95 percent of manganese refining. This dominance gives China leverage over customers, something it has used in the past. In 2010, China stopped exporting rare earth elements (a subset of critical minerals essential to electronics manufacturing) to Japan amid heightened tensions between the two countries.

3. The United States can lessen its dependence but doing so will take time. The United States is working with its allies and partners to lessen potential vulnerabilities to disruptions in critical mineral supply. The recently signed Mineral Security Partnership with Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and others would allow investments in mining infrastructure abroad by the United States through the Export-Import Bank. The United States is currently negotiating a deal with the EU that would harmonize rules governing critical minerals used in electric batteries. The United States struck a similar deal with Japan last month. President Biden could also invoke the Defense Production Act to rapidly increase domestic investment in critical minerals. But all of these steps will take time to produce results. It can take more than sixteen years to make a new mine operational. There’s been pushback to investments in mining and processing due to their harmful environmental impacts, and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have voiced concern about a need for congressional oversight in the trade agreements.

4. Technological advancements could lessen supply chain vulnerabilities. Technology has a long history of solving scarcity problems. Critical minerals could provide yet another example. For example, progress is being made on developing sodium batteries. They don’t require either cobalt or nickel as lithium batteries do. Even better for the United States, Wyoming sits on top of more than 90 percent of the world’s main industrial source of sodium. But it would take time to scale up sodium battery production and ease doubts about their durability, let alone ramp up construction of sodium battery factories to compete with China and get the rest of the world onboard.

Shortly after Jim and Morgan talked, Chile nationalized its lithium reserves, citing economic and environmental concerns. Chile isn’t the first country to make this move. Mexico did the same last year.

If you’re looking to read more of Morgan’s work, check out the piece he co-wrote earlier this year for Foreign Affairs arguing that the United States needs to rework its supply chains at home and abroad to “win the energy battle of the twenty-first century.” In another article for Foreign Policy, he and his co-authors warned America’s dependency on the critical minerals that China dominates poses a national security risk. He also co-wrote a piece for the Wilson Center’s New Security Beat blog that argued the United States needs to diversify its supply chains globally and domestically so that its climate mitigation strategies and military readiness are not in competition with one another.Read Original Post

Greenland: Đảo băng nóng bỏng

~ Phạm Thu Hương ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

CHIÊU VĂN 26/3/2021 8:00 GMT+7

TTCT – Hồi năm 2019, khi tổng thống Mỹ lúc đó là Donald Trump hỏi mua hòn đảo khổng lồ ở Bắc Cực Greenland từ Đan Mạch, ông đã bị chê là vô duyên và lố bịch. Nhưng giờ, khi cuộc bầu cử sớm sắp diễn ra ở đấy – chính quyền Greenland sụp đổ vì tranh cãi liên quan tới tài nguyên đất hiếm – xem chừng ông Trump đã nhìn xa trông rộng.

Cuộc bầu cử ở Greenland, với tổng dân số chỉ hơn 56.000 người, dự kiến diễn ra vào ngày 6-4, và chỉ hơn một tháng sau sẽ là cột mốc trọng đại khác – 300 năm ngày vùng đất này trở thành lãnh thổ của Đan Mạch. Đầu cua tai nheo cũng là từ đó: ở đây có một phe đang đòi độc lập.

Hình ảnh này không có thuộc tính văn bản thay thế; tên tập tin là 2a5f6f07.jpg

Dân Greenland biểu tình phản đối một dự án khai khoáng. Ảnh: ejatlas.org

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Myanmar’s environment hit by rare earth mining boom

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Pristine parts of northern Kachin State are under threat as demand grows for high-tech devices that rely on rare earth.

mekongeye.com

Kachin State’s Chipwi Township in northernmost Myanmar is known for its pristine forests and crystal-clear water.

But 10 years ago, local residents started noticing the patches of land that had been cleared on the lush mountains surrounding their town, which borders China’s Yunnan province. It started with one patch of land, where all the trees were cut down. Then others followed.

Soon locals saw heavy machinery being moved through their town, heading to those barren plots of land. Then workers started flooding in. They excavated the ground and left open pits, many filled with chemically-laced water, in areas once rich in woodland. The water near those sites was no longer clean.

It became obvious at that stage that the newcomers were looking for something underneath the ground – rare earth, which contains elements widely used in high-tech products like smartphones, computer components, electric vehicles and solar cells.  

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China holds firm on strategy to build self-sufficient domestic polysilicon industry

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

pv-magazine.com
The Chinese government will extend duties on U.S. and South Korean polysilicon for another five years from today despite committing to buy $200 billion more American goods and services in the trade deal signed on Wednesday. Poly manufacturer REC Silicon says it expects polysilicon to form part of that trade agreement.

 

China’s latest trade tariff announcement appears to be at odds with the deal just signed with the U.S.

Image: Nathan Hughes Hamilton/Flickr

China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has announced the anti-dumping duties applied to U.S. and South Korean-made polysilicon will remain in place for another five years from today.

Norwegian poly producer REC Silicon, which manufactures almost all of its current output of the solar module raw material in the U.S., said this morning the extension of duties announced yesterday was expected as part of a pre-planned tariff review independent of the trade deal thrashed out by President Trump and China on Wednesday. Tiếp tục đọc “China holds firm on strategy to build self-sufficient domestic polysilicon industry” →

Where is gallium in our bauxite? Gali – kim loại trọng yếu – đang nằm ở đâu trong quặng Boxit của Việt Nam?

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ 1 bình luận

Bài tiếng Việt theo sau bài tiếng Anh

Where is gallium in our bauxite?

Given the strategic role of gallium in the world’s economy and security, and the availability of gallium in bauxite, why there has been absolutely neither discussion on nor mentioning of gallium through all these years of heated discussions about bauxite in Việt Nam?

Gallium is listed as a critical mineral by many advanced economies and may very well exist in Vietnam’s bauxite mines.

Minerals that have important uses and no viable substitutes, yet face potential disruption in supply, are defined as critical to a nation’s economic and national security.”[1]  Oftentimes, the terms “critical mineral” and “strategic mineral” are used interchangeably – if a mineral is deemed critical, it is usually essential for a national strategy, be it an economic or a defense strategy.


Gallium, appearance: silvery blue
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Khủng hoảng kim loại đất hiếm: ngành năng lượng sạch đừng lo lắng

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này
Rare-earth stock prices from 2007 to 2017

“Nguyên tố Đất hiếm” là 17 nguyên tố hóa học với tên gọi lạ lùng và đặc điểm không bình thường. Số nguyên tử của chúng là từ 57-71, 21 và 39. Hai phân nhóm nhỏ hơn, một nhóm là hiếm hơn và vì thế có giá trị hơn nhóm còn lại, có đặc điểm hóa học tương tự, vì vậy chúng thường được tìm thấy và khai thác cùng nhau.

Mặc dù tên gọi là hiếm, đất hiếm không phải là chất hiếm về mặt địa lý nhưng được phân tán rộng khắp lớp vỏ trái đất. Tuy nhiên, đất hiếm được khai thác ở một vài nơi và bởi một vài công ty bởi vì chúng thường không xuất hiện tập trung một chỗ với lượng lớn. Hơn nữa khai thác mỏ ngày càng nhiều chi phí và rủi ro, thị trường đất hiếm trên thế giới không lớn (vài tỷ đô la một năm), dễ bay hơi, phức tạp và bị chi phối bởi Trung Quốc, nơi mà không phải tất cả các mỏ và xuất khẩu khoáng sản đều hợp pháp và minh bạch. Một chuyên gia kết luận rằng khoảng một nửa số đất hiếm được sản xuất trên toàn cầu năm 2015 không nằm trong thống kê chính thức.
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Clean energy and rare earths: Why not to worry

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này
Amory Lovins
thebulletin

“Rare earths” are 17 chemical elements with awkward names and unusual properties. Their atomic numbers are 57–71, 21, and 39. Their two subfamilies, one scarcer and hence more valuable than the other, have similar chemistries, so they’re generally found and mined together.

Despite their name, rare earths are not geologically rare but are widely dispersed throughout the Earth’s crust. They are mined in few places and by few firms, though, because they tend not to occur in highly concentrated form. Further raising miners’ costs and risks, the world market for rare earths is modest (several billion dollars a year), volatile, complex, and dominated by China, where not all mines and exports are legal and transparent. One expert concluded that about half of 2015 global production was off the books. Tiếp tục đọc “Clean energy and rare earths: Why not to worry” →

What Happened to the Rare-Earths Crisis?

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

technologyreview_Four years ago, manufacturers fretted that trade controls in China would lead to a shortage of materials used in making an array of technology products. But demand fell more than expected.

February 25, 2015

      Four years ago, some manufacturers worried that they would run up against a shortage of rare-earth elements, which are used to make wind turbines, certain light bulbs, computers, and many other high-tech products. Rare earths actually aren’t rare, but they are found in low concentrations, attached to minerals from which they must be separated. And most of the facilities designed to mine and separate rare earths are based in China, which limited exports of these materials in 2009 and 2010 (see

“The Rare-Earth Crisis”

    ). A 2010 U.S. Department of Energy

report

    •  envisioned a possible “critical shortage” of five rare earth elements, especially dysprosium—crucial to the permanent magnets used in wind turbines and motors in hybrid or electric cars—between 2012 and 2014. But such worries seemingly dissipated without much fanfare. Why?
A chunk of dysprosium.

Falling prices Tiếp tục đọc “What Happened to the Rare-Earths Crisis?” →