“The disturbing reality is that the cash that fuels these abuses ultimately comes from the world’s fast-growing demand for these minerals, driven by the scaling up of green energy technologies,” said Clare Hammond, a senior researcher at Global Witness, which also conducted field work in Myanmar.
As mines in China shuttered, ore prices rose. In neighboring Myanmar, home to some of the world’s richest deposits of what are known as heavy rare earths, opportunity beckoned. Thousands of Jiangxi miners streamed across the border. Since 2015, imports from Myanmar have grown almost a hundredfold, according to UN trade data. Myanmar is now China’s single largest source of heavy rare earths, making up nearly half of the supply, according to Chinese customs data and expert estimates.
The leaching agents have tainted tributaries of Myanmar’s main river, prompted landslides and poisoned the earth, according to witnesses, miners and local activists. Water is no longer drinkable, and endangered species such as tigers, pangolins and red pandas have fled the area. “You, village leaders, should solve this issue,” he yelled as he pointed to the leaders, according to a recording of the January meeting obtained by Global Witness, which was shared with and verified by the AP. “Otherwise, I’ll have to start shooting and killing people. Do not underestimate me. I am not a child — this is not child’s play.”
The militias and warlords have turned Myanmar’s frontier with China into a modern-day wild west, with each tiny fiefdom demanding a cut of the profits that flow through its land. Dong said police have told him that the rare earths he extracts can only be sold to China, not to the Americans or Japanese, because they are China’s strategic resources. He is under no illusions about the damage from acids so strong that they corrode the shovels of his bulldozers and excavators – something he’d never seen before.As rare earths from Myanmar travel around the world, they pass through many hands.
As the ore is transformed into magnets, it is separated, refined and melted, according to interviews with miners and magnet engineers. Along the way, materials from different sources often get mixed, making it difficult to track any particular shipment of rare earths from Myanmar to a specific batch of magnets.