Vietnam is recently being portrayed as “following China’s playbook” on rare earths after it introduced a ban on exports. But if studied closely, they are structurally different with two distinct objectives. While China has restricted its rare earth exports, effective April 4, 2025, using licensing, quotas, and regulatory scrutiny to reinforce its dominance over a supply chain it already controls, Vietnam has put a complete ban, effective January 2026, to supporting its domestic industry that has struggled for decades to exploit its reserves.
China vs Vietnam - imitation of policy or inspiration?
China still accounts for 70 per cent of the global rare earth supply, boasting 700 million tonnes of reserves. and an even larger share of processing and magnet manufacturing. In comparison, Vietnam holds 3.5 million tonnes of rare earth reserves, concentrated mainly in the Northwest region, including Lai Chau, Lao Cai and Yen Bai provinces. This means that Vietnam’s resource base is objectively small ; so, the narrative of Vietnam as “the next China” in rare earths is illusory.
What make Vietnam relevant is not scale, but its geographical position, large untapped deposits, and its growing strategic partnerships with the US, Australia, Japan, and South Korea, all of whom are actively seeking to de-risk supply chains from China’s near-monopoly.
This is where Vietnam’s strategy begins to resemble China’s – not in restriction, but in value capture. Hanoi finally realised what Beijing internalised decades ago: that real money is not in exporting raw rare earth but in processing the ore into higher value products like magnets that China monopolises.
Also read: Global rare earth reserve, production and consumption scenario: A real-time check
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