Mine games

Every summer in the small town of Luhe county children would play and fish in clean water, as the sun would shine upon a healthy and rippling stream.

It's a scene that has pleased residents for ages in the hill-surrounded county of South China's Guangdong Province.

However, local residents realized those days were over when this past spring a large number of fish and shrimp were found dead not only in their favorite stream, but also in the Xinkeng reservoir, the stream's origin.

The residents attributed the death of the marine life to the pollution the reservoir has faced from local rare earth mining, which has almost depleted the lush vegetation that once covered the hills and has now polluted nearby waters through the discharge of unprocessed waste.

"Now that the water in the stream has been polluted, the fish and shrimp can no longer survive, and it's the result of the illegal mining," said a man surnamed Zhang who owns a small shop in the town. He also added that villagers now have to find their drinking water from other sources.

Rare earth excavation in Luhe county started around the end of last year, when a large number of mine owners from Jiangxi Province ventured to the small town and started working in the mining fields without a license, according to the Shanghai Morning Post.

All of the rare earth gathered during this time were later shipped to Japan, one of the biggest rare earth consumers in the world, according to Nanfang Daily.

However, the massive mining projects in Luhe county for some reason did not catch the attention of local authorities as the mines were allowed to smoothly operate.

"Without 'government insiders' in the village or any protection from the town and county, the illegal miners wouldn't dare use large equipment to get the rare minerals," Xinhua News Agency quoted an anonymous head of Jiexi county in Guangdong Province.

Fighting back
While local authorities turned a blind eye to the illegal mining, local villagers decided to do just the opposite.

On August 5, residents from the villages of Xiatang and Nanmenjiang established a patrol; guarding the road 24 hours a day so as to intercept vehicles carrying raw materials used for rare earth mining.

In order to stop further mining, over 2,000 local villagers took to the streets with hoes, smashing equipment and burning work sheds at the mines, according to Nanfang Daily. 10 days later, the crowd had destroyed at least ten illegal mines, the report said.

Composed of 17 chemical elements, rare earth minerals are widely found in many products, such like cellphone and airplane.

Wang Yan, a deputy editor-in-chief of the China Rare Earth Information bulletin, told the Global Times that the illegal mining of rare earth, especially in southern China, results in vegetation damage due to inadequate mining methods.

"In the past, many illegal mining operations used old mining methods such as hauling off large tracks of land," she said.
China has one third of the world's rare earth reserves and produces more than 90 percent of the world's rare earth metals every year.

New restrictions
This output has prompted the Chinese government to place restrictions on rare earth mining due to environmental pollution concerns.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ordered in May that new rare earth mining applications would not be accepted or approved, and mines currently in operation would be prohibited from expanding, according to a report by the China Securities Journal.

Unfortunately the new order has failed to curb the presence of illegal mines as a number of rare earth mines have sprung up in provinces such as Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong, the Nanfang Daily reported.

"There must be a reason for such a risk, just like drug trafficking. Money is behind it," Wang said, adding the soaring prices in recent years.

With soaring market prices, buyers like Japan which depends on China's rare earth exports have been found turning to illegal channels to purchase rare earth.

Yao Jian, spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, said November last year that China exported 32,200 tons of rare earth during the first nine months of 2010, of which 16,000 tons went to Japan, a 167 percent increase from the same period in 2009, Xinhua reported.

But according to Wang, presentations later made by Japanese enterprises during international rare earth meetings showed that certain amounts of rare earth had been smuggled out of China and into Japan each year through "unofficial channels."

"The information on rare earth imports found at Japanese Customs is not in accordance with the export amount found at Chinese Customs," Wang said, adding that both governments have reinforced their strength in controlling the illegal mining of rare earth, and departments have now joined together to combat such activities.