"The major cities in which rare earths were mined are Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Hunan, and Guangxi." [1]
Africa has relatively little in the way of discovered rare earth deposits. There are 50X as many known rare earth deposits in China as in South Africa, and that's the largest source in Africa. They are very much mining it at home. If they're getting them from abroad they're not "hoarding" them, there's a market, and other countries could just as easily buy.
Lots of articles can back me up here, it's blighted the land. [2, 3, 4]
Africa has relatively little in the way of discovered rare earth deposits. There are 50X as many known rare earth deposits in China as in South Africa, and that's the largest source in Africa. They are very much mining it at home. If they're getting them from abroad they're not "hoarding" them, there's a market, and other countries could just as easily buy.
Lots of articles can back me up here, it's blighted the land. [2, 3, 4]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_industry_in_China
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-ra...
[3] https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic...
[4] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...