In the last few months, the government has deployed helicopter patrols to spot illegal mines. Teams of dozens of police officers have conducted raids into the hills of northern Guangdong and arrested at least 100 owners and managers of rare earth mines and refineries, said a Chinese mining expert who insisted on anonymity because of the issue’s political risks. Government workers equipped with blowtorches have accompanied the police to cut apart illegal mining equipment and either seize it or distribute it to peasants for sale as scrap.

Chinese officials declined requests for comment.

The gangs have terrorized villagers who dare to complain about the many tons of sulfuric acid and other chemicals being dumped into streambeds during the processing of ore. Illegal rare earth mining and chemical runoff have poisoned thousands of acres of prime farmland, according to the government of Guangdong Province, and have been blamed for many illnesses.

Besides environmental concerns, geopolitics also appears to have played a role in the crackdown. The Chinese government imposed an unannounced embargo on all shipments of raw rare earths to Japan for two months starting in mid-September, during a territorial dispute over islands. Chinese customs inspectors even delayed some shipments to Europe and the United States by demanding that buyers prove they would use the rare earths for manufacturing and not resell them to Japan.

Image Credit... The New York Times

Smuggling of rare earths to Vietnam, where Japanese traders have long been active, somewhat undermined the sanctions’ effectiveness, industry officials said.

For manufacturers dependent on rare earths, any moral or ethical implications of the crackdown on illegal mines may be too diffuse to identify. It is typically impossible to trace rare earths back to the mine where they were originally produced, industry executives say, because even legal mines frequently trade raw material with illegal ones, depending on whether the legitimate operators have met their production quotas.

The picture is further blurred by various middlemen who buy rare earth products from legal and illegal refineries alike and mix them before reselling.