The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is planning new sanctions for regulatory violations in the sector.
China’s large-scale consolidation of its rare earth industry has now been completed. The once fragmented market is now dominated by the China Northern Rare Earth Group and the China Rare Earth Group, and is therefore largely state-controlled. However, Beijing continues to tighten its influence over the industry, now in a more granular and targeted way. According to a report by the Global Times on Wednesday, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is preparing a new penalty framework for violations related to the extraction, smelting, and other processing stages of rare earth production. Infractions of mining quotas, smelting and separation rules, or other regulations will in the future be penalized under a four-tier system based on severity. Possible sanctions include the confiscation of illegal profits, seized products, and equipment, as well as tiered financial penalties. In particularly serious cases, companies may face revocation of their operating licenses. Public feedback on the proposal can be submitted to the ministry until the end of May.
Photo: via Canva, montage rawmaterials.net
