Primary Taiwanese news agency Central News Agency (CNA) recently reported that, as Beijing engages in battles with Europe and the United States over China’s rare earth ban, the management of China Rare Earth Group has seen a wave of senior executive resignations since the beginning of this year. It is rumored that many people have been poached by foreign rare earth laboratories, and some have resigned collectively.
China Rare Earth Corporation has undergone significant changes in its management this year. The general manager, one deputy general manager, and three board directors of the company resigned in June. Among them, the former general manager still serves as the company’s Communist Party secretary; the three former directors no longer work for the company after resigning.
The former vice president of China Rare Earth, Dr. Liao Chunsheng, resigned in April, and the company’s CFO and chairman of the supervisory board resigned in January. Among them, the 60-year-old Liao Chunsheng, who was a student of the “Father of China’s Rare Earths” Xu Guangxian, has attracted much attention. There were rumors that Dr. Liao and other senior executives took their rare earth technology and went to Canada to work for the Canadian Rare Earth Laboratory. China Rare Earth Group just issued an emergency statement, claiming that the relevant job position adjustments were “normal personnel movements.”
The publicly traded China Rare Earth Group controls 60 percent of the world’s rare earth supply. Its business covers the entire industrial chain from mining to deep processing. Rare earths are one of the focal points of the recent US-China trade war. Earlier, China’s Ministry of Commerce reportedly required all Chinese domestic rare earth industry companies to submit a list of employees with key professional skills to the government, and some experts were required to hand in their passports.
Sources:
(1) CNA, June 30, 2025
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202506300199.aspx
(2) STCN, June 30, 2025
https://stcn.com/article/detail/2311877.html