China Is Investing Heavily To Control Rare Earths Overseas

On December 25, 2024, while the world was busy with the holidays, Beijing did something that many geopolitical analysts are still trying to assess.

A new state-owned firm, Guangyan International Investment Co., was quietly registered in Beijing, with 60 billion yuan (about $8.9 billion) in registered capital. The majority owner is China Minmetals Corp., one of China’s largest state-supervised minerals conglomerates, which holds a 71% stake.

It was created to line up, coordinate, and basically harmonize all Chinese overseas mining and metals investments under the direct “steering” of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), widely regarded as China's most powerful economic planning body.

For months, the company attracted little attention outside specialist circles. Then, in June 2026, Bloomberg revealed its broader strategic purpose. The announcement prompted analysts to reassess what could become one of the defining developments for global commodity markets in the years ahead, with ripple effects likely to be reflected across future economic calendar data.

Read also: Semiconductor Boom Is Getting Bigger Than AI

What makes Guangyan different from a conventional holding company is its scope. It can co-invest alongside Chinese firms in overseas resource projects, provide regulatory and legal compliance support across jurisdictions, and shape industry-wide planning of outbound deals.

In May 2026, the NDRC summoned major Chinese miners, including Zijin Mining Group, the country's largest copper and gold producer, and steel giant China Baowu, to deliver a clear directive: large companies would receive government backing for overseas investments, while smaller, riskier players would face tighter controls.

More strikingly, the NDRC explicitly urged Chinese miners to enhance China's influence over commodity prices on international markets, a directive that turns Guangyan from a financing vehicle into an instrument of global market power.

The scale of China's existing advantage makes this institutional consolidation particularly significant. China accounts for about 60% of rare earth mining worldwide and over 90% of processing and refining capacity. It also produces roughly 93% of the world’s high-strength permanent rare earth magnets. In other words, it dominates nearly every stage of the supply chain.

Since 2023, Chinese firms have already invested more than $120 billion in overseas mining and mineral processing. The focus has been on lithium, copper, nickel, cobalt, and various rare earth elements.

Read also: Development of the Packers and Movers App

Then there’s Africa, home to some of the world's largest reserves of critical minerals. Chinese state-backed banks handed out $24.9 billion in Belt and Road Initiative mining loans in the first half of 2025 alone, already exceeding the total for all of 2024.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, which supplies the majority of the world's cobalt, Chinese state-owned companies control about 80% of total production. Also, half of the ten biggest cobalt mines in the world are owned by Chinese entities.

Ownership is only part of the strategy. In April 2025, Beijing imposed export restrictions on seven rare earth elements in retaliation for US tariffs, impacting supply chains for US stock screener leaders such as Tesla and Apple.By October 2025, those controls expanded to twelve elements and were modeled explicitly on the US foreign direct product rule, extending Chinese regulatory authority across global supply chains.

The consequences were immediate: prices for controlled materials rose by as much as sixfold outside China, while European companies saw licensing approval rates fall below 25% in several sectors. 

Read also: How Bulk Buying Changes the Economics of a Growing Business

As of July 1, 2026, China's new Outbound Investment Regulations (State Council Order No. 837) have further tightened central oversight of all overseas capital flows, creating a legal framework capable of unwinding foreign deals that conflict with national security interests.

Western responses exist: the US-Australia Critical Minerals Framework, NATO's recognition of rare earths as essential to defense and security,the EU's €350 billion Critical Raw Materials strategy. Yet the structural gap remains substantial.

Analysts estimate it will take five to seven years to build meaningful alternative processing capacity outside China. In May 2025, Lynas Rare Earths became the first non-Chinese company to produce commercial quantities of dysprosium oxide — a single element, in a single facility.

China is not betting on individual mines. It is building a globally integrated critical minerals system spanning financing, diplomacy, refining, and pricing. By contrast, the West is still building individual projects. That asymmetry, more than any major export ban or investment deal, may prove to be the defining industrial story of the year.