The refining map, not the mine, is the durable concentration

Beneath the headline tension over rare earths sits a more structural fact about where processing happens. For the magnet rare earths, China accounted for roughly sixty percent of mining output in 2024 and about ninety-one percent of separation and refining. Mining can be diversified faster than refining, so the refining share is the harder dependency to unwind, and any assessment of supply risk that stops at the mine misses where the real chokepoint lies.