China Says It's Investigating, Arresting Illegal Exporters of Critical Minerals
China has made several arrests and begun multiple investigations involving exports of critical minerals since launching a special operation earlier this year to crack down on the smuggling of those minerals (see 2505090018), its Ministry of Commerce said July 19.
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Government agencies have set up “special teams” to find smugglers and adopted a "zero tolerance and heavy-handed" approach to enforcement, a ministry spokesperson said, according to an unofficial translation. “They have continuously increased law enforcement and case-handling efforts, investigated and handled a number of cases involving illegal exports of strategic minerals, arrested a number of smuggling suspects, and the special operation has achieved phased results.”
During a government meeting this month about the enforcement operation, officials stressed that the “current situation of combating the smuggling of strategic minerals is still severe.” Smugglers are falsifying export declarations and are transshipping the minerals through third countries to evade authorities, the spokesperson said.
China said it plans to soon “publish a number of typical law enforcement and judicial cases” involving illegal mineral exports, and it urged officials to “resolutely prevent detour exports, and include overseas end-users that circumvent national export control measures" in its export control list, which blocks listed entities from receiving certain sensitive Chinese exports without a special license. Beijing also aims to “formulate and issue guidelines for the [compliant] export of strategic minerals; guide and warn export companies to conduct due diligence and strictly prevent related items from being illegally used for military users or military purposes.”
Beijing in recent years has imposed export controls on a series of critical minerals that have historically been purchased by the U.S. and other Western nations, including gallium, germanium and antimony (see 2307050018, 2310030035 and 2503260054). Washington and Beijing struck a deal earlier this year for China to ease export restrictions on certain rare earths (see 2507150013).