Rare earth has the reputation of "industrial vitamin" and has a wide range of uses. It is an indispensable and important basic material in high-tech fields such as information technology, biotechnology, energy technology and national defense construction. It is important for some traditional industries such as agriculture, chemical industry, and building materials. The transformation and innovation of other industries also play an important role, usually divided into light rare earth elements and heavy rare earth elements.
China is the country with the richest rare earth resources. In recent years, due to over-exploitation and unlimited low-price sales, China's rare earth resource reserves have generally shown a downward trend in the world rankings, and the resource advantages are worrying. China has made indelible contributions to the development of global emerging industries, but China has been treated unfairly under the WTO system, and China itself has not fully understood the strategic significance of rare earth resources, and abnormal production and smuggling are very serious. To this end, China had to introduce a series of protective mining and development policies.
China's rare earth ore areas are characterized by a wide range of points and relatively concentrated geographical distribution. At present, my country has discovered thousands of deposits, mines and mineralized areas in more than 2/3 of the provinces (regions), but 98% of the total rare earth resources are distributed in Inner Mongolia, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Sichuan, Shandong and other places. There is a distribution pattern in the east, west, north and south, and it is characterized by "light in the north and heavy in the south. Among them, the medium and heavy rare earth minerals are mainly distributed in the east and south-central regions. In the Nanling area at the junction of Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, and Guangxi provinces (regions), there are ion-adsorbed medium-rare earth and heavy rare earth minerals. This type of rare earth mine is easy to mine and extract, and has become an important production base of medium and heavy rare earths in China. In fact, it is also the main producing area of medium and heavy rare earths in the world. In recent years, it has made a series of progress in geological survey, mineral management, resource evaluation and environmental problem assessment. Since 2011, some rare earth deposits have been discovered in Guangxi and Guangdong, and their rare earth reserves may exceed Jiangxi. Light rare earth minerals are mainly distributed in North China and southwest China. Rare earth minerals in North China are concentrated in Baiyun Obo District in Baotou City, Inner Mongolia and Weishanhu County in Jining City, Shandong Province; rare earth minerals in Southwest China are concentrated in Mianning County and Dechang County in Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan Province, and Chuxiong Prefecture and Dehong Prefecture in Yunnan Province.
For a long time, China's rare earth industry small, scattered, chaotic, poor and other issues are very prominent. By 2013, there were more than 100 rare earth separation and smelting enterprises in China, with a total annual production capacity of about 300000 tons, and the average annual production capacity of each enterprise was only about 3000 tons. The problems of small scale, scattered layout and low-level repeated construction were prominent.
It is worth noting that China's rare earths currently have three world firsts, namely: the world's largest rare earth reserves; the world's largest rare earth production scale; and the world's largest rare earth processing and export volume. However, China's rare earth deep processing technology and application technology are far from the first in the world, and the production and application of high-tech and high value-added rare earth products lags far behind the United States, Japan and other developed countries.
"The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths." How to develop and utilize this precious resource, which is comparable to the strategic position of "oil"? Suggestions are as follows: ① Rare earth is a precious strategic mineral resource, a resource of China and a resource of all mankind, and protecting China's rare earth resources is also protecting the resources of all mankind. It is of great significance to establish a global "community with a shared future for all mankind based on rare earths"; ② China exports rare earths, but it is difficult for China to import high-end technology for deep processing of rare earths and its derivatives. It cannot just "buy and sell" in the free market, but must find another way out. It is recommended to seek new breakthroughs through the cooperation model of "technology resources", especially heavy rare earths must be highly valued; ③No matter how the international market changes, China must have its own strategic positioning and strategic layout, and innovate from the source instead of others; ④Strengthen the control of the total amount of mining and standardize exports; ⑤Strengthen the research and development of dual-use products, especially the transplantation of military technology to civilian use, it can greatly improve the overall level of my country's rare earth development and utilization, and in turn create new opportunities for the research and development of high-end rare earth products. □ (to be continued)
(Author: Key Laboratory of Mineralization and Resource Evaluation, Ministry of Natural Resources, Institute of Mineral Resources, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences)
Website Editor: Gong Li
