No, China does not intend to hoard REEs. We knew that already. The recent stir was because they stated that they intended to attempt to ensure their domestic manufacturers had adequate supplies, in view of increasing overseas demand. They want those metals or minerals to be used domestically, and value-added products exported instead. Any Co. can set up plants in China, providing employment, taxes, etc. Supply from their deposits is not increasing in step with world demand, especially in light of probable increased demand over the next few years. They are trying to plan and control this aspect of their economy, as they do with everything.

Foreign and Chinese industry sources doubt Beijing’s dominant goal is to create an Opec-like price cartel. After flooding the world market with cheap rare earths for more than a decade, Beijing now wants to ensure that it has the materials it needs to feed its own growing ambitions to build advanced and green technology industries such as electric vehicles.
Inner Mongolia, which contains 75 per cent of China’s rare earth deposits, said earlier this week that it wanted to build a strategic reserve of rare earths to stabilise prices. It also wants to consolidate the local industry. The aim, according to Inner Mongolia officials, is to conserve reserves and attract more users to set up manufacturing plants in Inner Mongolia.
Rare earths have been sold too cheaply, and some traders have sold supplies illegally overseas, threatening domestic supplies and causing over-exploitation and environmental problems, according to an official of the Chinese Society of Rare Earths.
Just cutting production, without a strategic reserve to boost price, will be hard for central government, because that will hurt profits of some state-owned firms and local governments, analysts say.