I really wonder how much rare earth element deposits are not found for want of looking. Not much reason to source them yourselves if the country (China) uses them for products that you're going to buy.
According to this map, China has vastly more. But is there something special about China/Myanmar geologically? I guess being downstream of the Himalayas is something.
The clays are all over the world, the processing to extract the REE's of interest is still intensive regardless.
"According to this map" is essentially meaningless w/out a map specific definition of "reserve".
The terms "reserve", "resource" and their variations are misused outside of technical literature that cites whether they are defined via a JORC or other classification.
The bias toward China in that map likely comes from two notes:
* "proven" reserves - as in tested and estimated to some higher standard, as opposed to "we know there's a lot 'over here' but we haven't spent $X million on a drill assay program yet.
* "controlled or owned" by China - Chinese companies are majority shareholders in joint ventures that source raw materials across the globe (they source concentrates from Australia, from Peru, from elsewhere, in addition to their home soil deposits). This means a number of maps might show all REE deposits owned by Chinese companies as on the books for China (as that is where much of the processing of concentrates occurs).
For interest:
North Stanmore in Western Australia has emerged as one of the world's most extraordinary heavy rare earth element (HREE) deposits, particularly for dysprosium and terbium in North Stanmore. (Sept, 2025)
There's some in Brazil so I assume it can be found in appropriate conditions globally. I'm pretty sure AU will have some, because AU always seen have some. The issue still is going to be process/seperation, where main point is clay leeched HREE at scale didn't exist before PRC commercialization, so it's not just let's dust off old mineral textbooks, need to rediscover the entire tacit knownledge process for high purity extraction.
E: brushed up a little bit from a few month ago and AU just found some clay, because of course they did.
According to this map, China has vastly more. But is there something special about China/Myanmar geologically? I guess being downstream of the Himalayas is something.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/rare-eart...