In the late 1980s, due to the relatively high price of rare earth, a large amount of funds poured into the rare earth industry, and a large number of smelters were built and expanded. Coupled with the influx of thousands of private or private mines, the total output and export of rare earths in China have increased dramatically. From 1990 to 2005, China's rare earth output increased from 16000 tons to18700 tons, with an average annual growth rate of 14.3%. China's rare earth export volume is too large, and the export order is chaotic, which leads to the contradiction of oversupply in the international rare earth market and the price of rare earth products continues to fall. Moreover, there are more than 100 primary rare earth production plants in China, while there are only a few foreign importers, resulting in a vicious competition situation in which importers "send one hundred at a time" and China suppliers keep prices down. From 1990 to 2005, the export volume of rare earths in China increased by nearly 10 times, but the average price kept falling. In recent years, the low-cost loss of rare earth resources in China is very serious. The data show that in 2005, the annual export volume of rare earth in China increased by 9 times compared with 1990, but the price decreased by more than 55%. According to the data released by China Rare Earth Information Center and other institutions, the output of rare earth mineral products in China in 2005 was 1 19000 tons, up by 2 1% year-on-year, accounting for 92.7% of the global total output, of which about 55,300 tons were exported, up by1. According to statistics, from 1 to August 2006, China exported 46,600 tons of rare earth products, with an export value of US$ 306 million, up by 3.7% and 49 1% respectively over the same period of last year. The export enterprises are mainly Jiangsu, Beijing, Jiangxi, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and other provinces. The export of rare earth products in Inner Mongolia is 9764. 12 tons, accounting for 20.96% of the total, ranking first. However, the added value of rare earth products is still low. Someone once said humorously, "Rare earth is sold into soil."
The export of rare earth products in China is increasing by nearly 70% every year, but the current export price is about half that of 15 years ago. Even in the context of the soaring global prices of various non-ferrous metals in recent years, the prices of rare earth products are still facing a downward trend. In other words, a large number of exports have plunged China's rare earth industry into a terrible situation of "the more you sell, the less you earn", and even a terrible situation of "no loss if you don't sell, the more you sell, the more you lose". In 2004, compared with 1998, the number of rare earth enterprises increased by four times, the output of rare earth concentrate increased by two times, the output of single oxide increased by 16 times, the output of rare earth metals increased by 120 times, and the output of NdFeB increased by 14 1 times, but it was sold.
At present, more than 90% of upstream and downstream products of foreign rare earths are imported from China. Due to the low export price of rare earth products in China, some developed countries with rare earth mines, such as the United States, Australia and Canada, have restricted or stopped developing their own rare earth mines in recent years and imported them from China instead. When the market price is low, some countries with scarce rare earth resources buy in large quantities to increase their reserves, while China's exporters compete at low prices. The United States stopped mining its own rare earth mines from 1999, and all of them were purchased from China. After buying rare earth concentrate from China, Japan sank it into the seabed for later use. Therefore, although China has carried out macro-control on rare earth exports in recent years, which has restricted a large number of rare earth exports, it has achieved little. Whenever the price of rare earths rises slightly, foreign investors stop buying and using stocks, while China enterprises, unable to bear the pressure of stocks, cut prices again to maintain their normal operations. In recent years, enterprises from some developed countries have invested and set up factories in China Rare Earth Resource Zone on a large scale because they are not restricted by quotas to buy primary products of rare earth raw materials in China. As a result, the quota system of rare earth products implemented in China has been shelved to some extent. At present, there are nearly 10 foreign-funded factories in Inner Mongolia alone. These enterprises buy a large number of rare earth raw materials and metals locally, and then transport them abroad for further processing or storage after simple processing, which successfully circumvents China's export quota restrictions. Domestic enterprises only process the first few processes, export them to foreign countries for deep processing, and leave the energy-consuming, water-consuming and highly polluting processes at home. Foreign enterprises get primary products, and the value-added of purified products is 10 times. As the country with the largest reserves of rare earth resources in the world, its reserves, output, sales volume and consumption rank first in the world. On the other hand, due to the lack of pricing power in the international market, China is only a passive price receiver in the international rare earth market, and the pricing power in the international rare earth market is completely monopolized by foreign countries, so it can only passively accept foreign price makers. The lack of pricing power has not only made China's rare earth industry "begging for food in a golden rice bowl", but also been in a passive position of being slaughtered and exploited for a long time.
At present, the annual output value of rare earth products and related application industries in China is only about 50 billion yuan. The research and application of rare earth in China started late, about 10 years behind the developed countries, especially in the industrialization of cutting-edge products. Rare earth products are divided into rare earth smelting separation products (low-end products) and rare earth functional material products (high-end products). At present, China's rare earth extraction and separation technology is unique in the world, but there is still a big gap between China and developed countries in the production technology of rare earth functional materials. Japan, the United States, France and other developed countries have mastered the core technology of producing rare earth functional materials and formed a series of patents. These patents not only represent technology, but also mean market and interests, which restricts the transfer of rare earth industry in China to the high-end industrial chain. The research and application level of rare earth is a test of a country's comprehensive technology and industrial level. Developed countries have accumulated a lot of technology, and the level of equipment manufacturing and automation is high, and large-scale industrial production can be realized soon after R&D breakthrough. China has a low level of related hardware equipment and automation. Although many rare earth application technologies have made breakthroughs in the laboratory, it is difficult to pass the pilot test or even the small test, and large-scale industrialization is even more difficult. Taking rare earth hydrogen storage materials for manufacturing high-performance power batteries as an example, Chinese experts began to study them as early as 10 years ago, and the laboratory preparation has already made a breakthrough, but it has not been industrialized on a large scale so far. Due to the inability to realize large-scale industrialization, many cutting-edge rare earth products needed in China's industry, national defense and other fields have to be produced in the laboratory, and the low level of automation and manual operation also leads to poor consistency of product performance. In addition, the small output and high production cost of each batch of rare earth products have seriously restricted the development and competitiveness of China's rare earth industry.