Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

China's Ministry of Commerce issued Announcement No. 23 of 2026 on June 22, 2026, adding 10 US entities to the Export Control Management List under the Export Control Law and Dual-Use Items Export Control Regulations. The listing prohibits Chinese exporters from supplying dual-use items to these entities and bars any global party from transferring China-origin dual-use goods to them; ongoing transactions are suspended pending MOFCOM approval. The 10 entities include the two largest non-Chinese rare earth producers — MP Materials Corp. (Mountain Pass, CA) and USA Rare Earth Inc. (Round Top, TX) — as well as eight US defence firms (Aveox, Red Cat Holdings, Teal Drones, IMSAR, Jaia Robotics, Ball Aerospace, Oshkosh Defense, L3Harris Maritime). MOFCOM explicitly framed the action as retaliation for the US DoD's June 8, 2026 update to the Section 1260H Chinese Military Companies list, which added ~80 Chinese parent firms and 188 affiliates.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Raw Materials Industry Division opened a 30-day public consultation on 28 April 2026 on the Administrative Penalty Discretion Standards Table operationalising the State Council's Rare Earth Management Regulation (Order No. 785, in force 1 October 2024). The draft sets a tiered fines schedule for breaches across the entire mining → smelting → separation → sales value chain — fines up to five times "illegal gains" for production-quota breaches under 10%, escalating to product/equipment confiscation and licence revocation for breaches over 30%. Traceability-reporting failures under MIIT's national rare-earth traceability platform are penalised separately with fines up to ten times illegal gains. Comments close 28 May 2026.

On 31 December 2025, China's Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs jointly published Announcement No. 91 of 2025, releasing the 2026 edition of the Catalogue of Dual-Use Items and Technologies Subject to Import and Export Licence Administration, effective 1 January 2026. The update replaces the 2025 catalogue and is issued under the Export Control Law of the PRC and the Regulations on Export Control of Dual-Use Items. Key additions to the export-licensing perimeter include samarium, gadolinium, and lutetium compounds — mid-to-heavy rare earths critical for permanent magnets (EV motors, wind turbines), phosphors (medical imaging, displays), and defence applications — requiring MOFCOM export licences for all covered shipments from 1 January 2026.

The Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) formally introduced a Rare Earth Mining Management Regulation in October 2025, establishing permit procedures, investor obligations, environmental protection rules, chemical-use standards, labour provisions, and enforcement mechanisms for the heavy-rare-earth (HREE) mining industry it controls in Chipwi and Pangwa townships of Kachin State. The KIO assumed de facto territorial governance of Kachin Special Region No. 1 in October 2024 following KIA military operations, inheriting authority over hundreds of Chinese-operated extraction sites that collectively supply an estimated 60–70 % of China's heavy rare earth oxide imports (~41,700 t in 2023) — the proximate basis for China's ~95 % global market share in terbium, dysprosium, and holmium. The regulation formalises a permit-and-tax regime that includes an export levy of approximately 35,000 CNY/tonne (~USD 4,800), with export permission first reactivated by KIO on 27 March 2025 after a post-takeover suspension of all mining and export activity.

MIIT, NDRC and MNR jointly issued the Interim Measures for Total Volume Control of Rare Earth Mining and Rare Earth Smelting and Separation on August 22, 2025, the first implementing regulation under State Council Order No. 785. The measures establish annual national production ceilings (for both mining and smelting/separation), distributed directly to designated enterprises at the start of each year, and — in the most novel provision — extend quota controls to rare-earth content in imported raw materials (e.g. Myanmar concentrate, Kazakh monazite, Guinea feedstocks) for the first time. Enterprises must report monthly output against quotas to local authorities and submit the prior month's flow data to an MIIT-operated traceability platform by the 10th of each month.

Order of the State Council No. 785, adopted at the 31st executive meeting on April 26, 2024 and effective October 1, 2024, is the first comprehensive statutory regulation governing China's entire rare earth industry chain — from mining and smelting through product circulation and import/export. It replaces the 2012 administrative-regulation framework with higher-authority State Council instruments, centralising quota allocation under MIIT+NDRC+MNR, establishing a mandatory national rare earth traceability platform, and extending domestic controls to foreign-origin feedstock refined in China. This regulation is the umbrella enabling instrument for all downstream MOFCOM and MIIT rare earth export-control measures enacted from 2024 onward.