"China Has Paid a High Price for Its Dominance in Rare Earths", The New York Times, 5 July 2025

[...] in northern China, toxic sludge from rare earth processing has been dumped into a four-square-mile artificial lake. In south-central China, rare earth mines have poisoned dozens of once-green valleys and left hillsides stripped to barren red clay.

[...] the worst damage occurred in and around Baotou, [...].

An artificial lake of [...] holds the waste left over after metals are extracted from mined ore. During the winter and spring, the sludge dries out. The dust that then blows off the lake is contaminated with lead, cadmium and other heavy metals, including traces of radioactive thorium [...].

During the summer rainy season, the sludge becomes coated with a layer of water that mixes with poisons and thorium. This dangerous mix seeps into the groundwater underneath the lake.

Oversight [...] is complicated. Pollution regulation in China is mainly the responsibility of provincial governments [...].

But the same provincial government also owns Baogang Group, a mining and chemicals giant [...].

During my trip to Baotou in early June, two colleagues and I were stopped on a public road by eight carloads of police officers and Baogang security guards and questioned. We were put in the back of a police cruiser and later taken to a guardroom at Baogang’s headquarters. With 21 carloads of police officers and local officials outside, we were held for two hours and questioned further before being released and told that the Weikuang Dam was “a business secret of the Baogang Group.”

A woman there who said she was with Baogang’s rare earth subsidiary, but did not provide her name, said that Baogang declined to comment.