China has also paid a huge environmental price for selling rare earths at the price of "cabbage." The Inner Mongolia Bayan Obo Mine, which accounts for 97% of the country's rare earth resource reserves, has only 10% utilization of rare earths. During the mining process, a large amount of tailings slurry was discharged into the depression, forming an 11-square-kilometer "mine lake" and piled with 135 million tons of tailings slurry, which contained about 70,000 tons of radioactive ***. The 钍 and * have very similar characteristics, so there is a famous cancer village 2 km west of the "Rare Earth Lake" of Baotou Steel.

In addition to disorderly mining, technological backwardness is also a major reason for the lack of pricing power for China's rare earths. Take yttrium oxide as an example, the time of export is more than 200,000 yuan per ton. When it comes to the purification of metal from Japan, it will be sold back to China. A kilogram will cost more than 200,000 yuan, and the spread is 1,000 times.

At present, China is already in the process of implementing the 2009-2015 Rare Earth Industry Development Plan and the Rare Earth Industry Development Policy. According to these plans, from 2009 to 2015, the production of rare earths in China will reach 13 million tons to 150,000 tons per year, while the output of smelting and separating companies will reach the level of about 120,000 tons to 150,000 tons.

In addition, 100 rare earth separation companies will also be restructured to reduce the number to 20 by 2015, thereby increasing the potential and competitiveness of rare earth companies in the market.

Known as the "Rare Earth Capital," Inner Mongolia's Baotou City, the rare earth industry's glory and environmental pollution have gone hand in hand. At present, Baotou Iron and Steel Group is looking for a "green" pollution control road, "Eleventh Five-Year" period has invested 6.3 billion for energy conservation and environmental protection and recycling economy project construction. In response to the strong “Rare Earth Lake” pollution problem, Baotou Municipal Government and Baotou Steel Group jointly invested 500 million yuan to implement resettlement relocation projects for 5,000 villagers in Xinguang Village and Da Laihai Village.

Apart from oil, what resources can be used to influence the world? The answer is rare earth! As the country with the most abundant rare earth reserves in the world, long-term indiscriminate exploitation has caused ecological consequences. Over-exposure has led to a sharp decline in reserves and loss of rare earths' pricing power in the international market. R&D technologies for high-end rare earth products with independent intellectual property rights are lacking. Fortunately, China's rare earth management policy was introduced in intensive after 2005. The government successively cracked down and vigorously rectified the chaos of the rare earth industry and tried to eradicate the ills.