Rare earth industry in China
[5] A few years later, Xu created the State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Materials Chemistry and Applications for research on these elements.[5] Later in the 2000s, Xu was also influential in telling the government to adopt export quotas because he saw the potential rare earths had in the technology sector and wanted to keep these precious resources within China.[4] In 1989, Ke Ning Da Industry of Ningbo, China partnered with US firm Tredas International to make 40 tons of magnets.[4] During these ventures, the Chinese government provided more money for new facilities and the industry also received new technologies from their partners which catapulted China to the forefront of rare earth production.As rare earth prices went up because of the restriction of export, many illegal mines were developed by organized criminals to benefit from the trade.[8] The smuggling by organized criminal groups is harmful to China's rare earth industry as it depletes resources rapidly, deflates prices and causes supply problems for local producers.In northern China, rare earth industry is dominated by the Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Company.[3] Large US mining companies such as Molycorp closed due to the mix of China's abundance of rare earths and their capacities for production, the cost of labor, and stringent environmental regulations during the Nixon era.[20] As production levels reached all time highs and China declared rare earths to be protected, the government imposed tight regulations on exports.In response, the US and Japan appealed to the World Trade Organization to reduce their practices that secured the monopoly on rare earths and to stop pressuring other countries to move their jobs to China.China's rare earth industry is of significance to the United States and the rest of the world today because of the increasing demands for tech products.[21] Therefore, countries are going to have to find ways to reduce rare earth usage, mine their own, or pay ever increasing prices.The major cities in which rare earths were mined are Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Hunan, and Guangxi.