The world has long lived under the assumption that raw materials are merely a question of extraction. Yet rare earth magnets, tungsten, and antimony quietly demonstrate a different reality: what matters more is not how much is mined, but how much is retained domestically — and how rapidly internal consumption grows.
China produces approximately 90–94% of the world’s NdFeB rare earth magnets, and an estimated 60–70% of this output is consumed within its own economy. Only 30–40% enters global export markets. In effect, the global economy operates on less than one-third of total production, and that share is not expanding — it is gradually tightening. The rest of the world is competing for a constrained portion of supply that is already structurally allocated, leaving little to no buffer for demand shocks.
Tungsten presents a slightly less extreme picture at first glance, though the underlying dynamics remain similar. China accounts for roughly 80% of global tungsten mining and processing, while domestic consumption is estimated at 50–60%. This leaves approximately 40–50% available for export. In practical terms, half of the global tungsten system is absorbed by China’s own industrial base, while the remaining half must serve the entire rest of the world — despite steadily rising internal demand.
Antimony reveals an even tighter structural imbalance. China is responsible for approximately 50–70% of global processing capacity, while domestic consumption is estimated at 65–75%. Only 25–35% is available for export. This is no longer a balanced commodity market but a residual allocation system: the global economy receives only what is not immediately absorbed by China’s rapidly expanding industrial ecosystem.
When these figures are combined, the structural asymmetry becomes clear. On average, China retains domestically:
— 60–70% of global magnet production,
— 50–60% of tungsten output,
— 65–75% of antimony processing.
At the same time, domestic consumption across all three supply chains is growing faster than global demand, driven by electric vehicles, energy infrastructure, industrial automation, defense manufacturing, and the rapid expansion of high-tech production systems that are inherently material-intensive.
This leads to the central conclusion: the remaining export shares — 30–40% of magnets, 40–50% of tungsten, and 25–35% of antimony — can no longer be considered surplus supply. They effectively represent the structural deficit of the global system, as the rest of the world is already operating close to full utilization of available volumes, with minimal strategic reserves.
The dynamics become even more severe when demand growth is taken into account. Global consumption of these materials continues to rise annually, in some sectors by several percent and in others at double-digit rates, particularly in electric mobility and defense technologies. Meanwhile, China’s domestic consumption is increasing at a comparable or even faster pace, steadily compressing the share available for export.
As a result, even if export volumes remain stable in absolute terms, the relative shortage faced by the rest of the world will deepen over time. In other words, the system may already be operating with a 10–20% structural tightness today, which could widen to 20–30% or more as compounding demand growth collides with a constrained supply base.
This is why the issue is no longer primarily about price cycles or short-term market fluctuations. It reflects a structural reality in which one country consumes:
— the majority of global magnet production,
— half of global tungsten output,
— roughly two-thirds of refined antimony,
while the rest of the world attempts to build its industrial future on what remains.
Andrievskii Verdict
Outside China, it is critically important to accelerate exploration, mining, and processing of rare earth and related strategic minerals, as the current supply architecture is already entering a phase of systemic shortage. This is not a cyclical pricing phenomenon but a long-term restructuring of global industrial geography. For this reason, the sector is emerging as one of the most strategically significant long-term investment areas — not driven by speculation, but by the unavoidable reconfiguration of global supply chains in a world that has long relied on a single dominant producer.
At the same time, it is increasingly difficult to reconcile some optimistic external narratives with the structural realities of the market. China is not primarily positioned as an exporter of raw inputs for downstream Western manufacturing; it is progressively prioritizing higher-value finished industrial products within its own ecosystem, leaving only residual volumes of strategic materials available for global trade. In that context, any assertion of abundant or easily negotiable supply expansions can appear, at best, overly optimistic when measured against physical availability constraints rather than diplomatic language.
Aleksei Andrievskii is the founder of the ANDRIEVSKII SEA WEALTH family office in Cyprus, a member of the advisory board at Bendura Bank AG, Liechtenstein