[benologist]

I saw it explained like this. Rare minerals are everywhere but they're spread out, and China's advantage is they will destroy a lot of environment to extract them while other countries are regulating protections for the environment. If that is true it would be very difficult for other countries to fill the demand?

[iguy]

I thought lots of existing mines had ore containing them, but can't make a profit extracting them, so they don't. How quickly such extraction/refining steps could be added, I don't know. (Am far from an expert though!)