China has scrapped quotas on rare earths exports and will probably replace them with a resources tax, eliminating a policy that caused friction with its trading partners and heightened awareness of their importance as strategic assets.
China is home to most of the world’s deposits and almost all processing of the 17 minerals classed as rare earths — elements with uses ranging from instrument panels to speciality steels.
A policy of export restrictions introduced a decade ago received worldwide attention in 2010, when a tightening of the quotas left traders scrambling and raised strategic concerns in Washington and Tokyo. The US won a challenge against the quotas at the World Trade Organisation earlier this year.
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