Rare earth can also be said as rare earth. Although rare earth cannot be defined in this way, I think it is indeed rare. Rare earth contains 17 rare metal elements on the earth.
In the past, steel and other non-ferrous metals performed poorly in strength, corrosion resistance and wear resistance, but they can be significantly improved after adding a small amount of rare earth, which also makes rare earth widely used in national defense, industry, chemical industry and other fields, including rare earth terminals such as engines, generators, electric motors and disk drives. However, at present, rare earth resources discovered by human beings are very rare, and it is difficult to separate rare earth alone. At the same time, the distribution of rare earth in the earth's crust is also very scattered. Many countries are unwilling to mine their own rare earth mines and spend money on imports to meet their long-term strategic needs.
Both national defense and military and sophisticated equipment have to use rare earth resources, so this non renewable resource is also called strategic metal, which is an important resource for long-term reserves all over the world. China's rare earth reserves account for about 36% of the global total, which is worthy of the name of the first in the world, but China bears more than 90% of the global market supply. It is sad that we can not dominate the price of rare earth, which results in that this non renewable resource in China was originally the price of gold, but was sold at the price of potatoes. The direct loss of rare earth resources in China reaches tens of billions every year.
China's rare earth reserves accounted for 71% of the world when they were the largest, but at present, they have indeed fallen below 23%. Especially between 1996 and 2009, it fell by nearly 40%. Although the state issued policies to control exports and launched the rare earth export war, it still lost its low price to many countries, including Europe, America and Japan, and became the strategic reserve of other countries through various non channels.

稀土，也可以这样说，稀有的土，虽然不能这样来定义稀土，但是我觉得它确实稀有，稀土含有十七种地球稀有的金属元素。

过去钢铁及其他有色金属在强度、抗腐蚀性和耐磨度方面表现不佳，而加入少量稀土之后就能够得到明显的改善，这也使得稀土被广泛运用于国防、工业、化工等领域，包括发动机、发电机、电动机、磁盘驱动等稀土终端。但目前人类发现的稀土资源非常稀少，而且稀土很难单独分离出来，同时稀土在地壳中的分布也十分分散，很多国家都不愿意开采自己的稀土矿，转而花钱进口，以满足自己长期的战略需求。

无论是国防军事还是尖端装备都得用上稀土资源，所以这一不可再生资源又被叫做战略金属，是世界各国长期储备的重要资源。而中国稀土储量约占全球总量的36%，是名副其实的世界第一，但中国却承担了全球90%以上的市场供应，令人痛心的我们却不能主导稀土价格，这造成我国的这一不可再生资源本来是黄金的价格最后却以土豆的价格出卖，每年我国的稀土资源直接损失达到上百亿。

我国稀土储量最多时占世界的百分之71，目前占确跌落在百分之23以下。 特别在1996至2009年间大跌百分之将近40。虽然国家出台政策控制出口，打响了稀土出口战争，但是还是通过各种非渠道，低廉价格流失向欧美日在内的许多国家，成为其它国家的战略储备。