rare earth metals aren’t “rare"
its just that most modern countries dont want to strip mine their own precious valuable land to extract them. It’s not like theres some global lottery of mineral deposits.
Well many other countries don’t want to mine/extract it because geographically they don’t have the source for those materials like China has Inner Mongolia where there’s an abundance of it (and we’re not talking Lithium).
They have the single largest Light Rare Earth Elements (LREE) source and the only major source of Heavy Rare Earth Elements. (HREE) source on the planet because the region has a unique Ion-Absorbing Clay through it. The latter has been critical in improving the heat resistance of high-performance magnets.
Other regions like Vietnam, Russia, Australia, United States and India have LREE’s but not nearly at the same amounts. HREE’s China literally sits on 98% of the world’s supply. Myanmar is next and probably why the United States wants to see if there are any in Greenland.