The Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced the implementation of new reporting criteria for rare earth and a range of other product exports. 

With immediate effect, the requirement put in place for exporters of bulk commodities is to report the shipment, amount and time of trades conducted for a list of products – including rare earth elements.  The new reporting policy is a move to stabilise China’s foreign trade and to allow a more precise understanding of current trends in China’s imports and exports of bulk commodities.  Despite concerns raised that the new reporting system will restrict exports of key rare earths for military and high-performance permanent magnet production, the lack of details provided on which specific rare earth products will be covered suggests this is not a targeted attempt to limit China’s international trade of key raw materials for defence or energy transition end-uses.         

Overall, the introduction of the new reporting requirements is not expected to have any fundamental impact on the exports of rare earths products from China to the rest of the world, as all exports are already covered by China’s export licence system, which denotes which companies are permitted to export rare earth products. The new regulation also only extends to the exports of rare earth compounds and metal products.  While this may have implications for the consumption of La and Ce compounds in catalyst manufacturing in the USA, Europe or Japan, it falls short of impacting exports of permanent magnet products used in electric vehicles, wind turbines or some military applications.   

The new reporting method may look to replace the existing export licensing system in China by an examination and approval system.  While this would mean greater supervision of individual exports of rare earths, this could improve the available data for traders in China to undertake exchanges.  The collection of additional information is also planned to assist policymakers in China in implementing more targeted policies for rare earth exports, further improving the competitiveness of the Chinese industry internationally.