China Tightens Control Over Strategic Minerals With Sweeping New Rules

The move comes as governments around the world race to secure supplies of critical minerals used in electric vehicles, clean energy technologies and advanced manufacturing. Photo: VCG
China has implemented sweeping new regulations governing the entire lifecycle of strategic minerals, tightening oversight of resources that are increasingly viewed as critical to national security and industrial competitiveness.
The rules, which took effect Monday, cover everything from mining rights, mineral exploration and extraction to stockpiling, environmental restoration, regulatory oversight and legal liability. They serve as implementing regulations for the revised Mineral Resources Law, which took effect on July 1, 2025.
The move comes as governments around the world race to secure supplies of critical minerals used in electric vehicles, clean energy technologies and advanced manufacturing.
Under the new regime, specific strategic minerals will be subject to protective measures such as total volume controls and restrictions on authorized mining entities. The government will prioritize a comprehensive bidding process over a simple highest-bidder approach when granting exploration rights for highly scarce strategic minerals or those with special technical and environmental requirements. Furthermore, mining rights cannot be transferred if they have been held for less than five years.
The regulations also call for the creation of an official catalog of strategic minerals. The selection will be based on factors including domestic resource availability, scarcity, import dependence and supply chain security.
“Strategic mineral resources are a core pillar of national security,” Beijing Dacheng Law Offices said in an article published in May. “The regulations elevate the management of strategic minerals to an unprecedented level and establish a protection mechanism covering the entire supply chain.”
The regulatory overhaul closes longstanding gray areas in the mining sector, according to the law firm. It effectively ends practices such as building first and seeking approval later, or mining now and restoring the environment decades later. Procedural compliance is now a prerequisite for maintaining mining rights, shifting the regulatory focus from post-violation penalties to oversight throughout a project’s lifecycle.
The new rules are part of a broader push by Beijing to tighten oversight of critical mineral supply chains, with rare earths among the earliest sectors to face more stringent regulation. In August 2025, the country implemented new interim measures for rare earths that added total volume controls for upstream imports and tracking for downstream use. Combined with existing regulations on mining and smelting, the new measures brought the entire domestic rare-earth supply chain under strict supervision.
Contact editor Wang Xintong (xintongwang@caixin.com)