BaoSteel Rare Earth Sales Champion Showcases the Future of Chinese Market Integration and Strategy

Highlights

• Lü Jingjing, a 12-year veteran at Baogang, achieved a 10% year-on-year sales increase in the volatile rare earth market through customer-first strategies and innovative procurement.
• Her strategic approach includes:
  • Long-term contract supply
  • Agile opportunistic procurement
  • Cross-departmental collaboration
• This strategy resulted in clearing 40+ tons of unsold stock and freeing 1.55 million yuan in working capital.
• Lü represents the growing professionalization of China’s rare earth sector, demonstrating how individual talent is quietly recalibrating the future balance of global rare earth power.

In the midst of an increasingly volatile global rare earth market, one figure at the forefront of China’s domestic sales resurgence stands out: Lü Jingjing of Baogang (Group) Company, named the 2024 Advanced Worker for her exceptional performance in rare earth sales and supply chain management. A 12-year veteran of the Gansu Rare Earth Marketing Division, Lü achieved a 10% year-on-year increase in sales amid sector turbulence—underscoring the rise of ever more sophisticated commercial talent now driving China’s internal consolidation of strategic resources.

Her performance is no accident. Lü’s integrated sales strategy—“customer-first, full-cycle service”—extends from old client retention to aggressive new client acquisition. She secured renewals of long-term contracts and added five strategic customers through differentiated service, technicalfluency in product performance, and agile market targeting. Her mindsetexemplifies China’s domestic-facing industrial strategy: prioritize loyalty, expand reach, and remove internal bottlenecks before the global market even comes into play.

More critically, Lü’s work also reveals the degree to which Baogang and its rare earth divisions are adapting operationally to uncertainty and state-imposed production mandates. Facing market whiplash and surging production quotas, Lü implemented a dual-pronged strategy of long-term contract supply with agile opportunistic procurement. This ensured steady inputs for Baogang’s metallurgical capacity expansion while reducing costs and risks. Her innovative collaboration across departments even cleared 40+ tons of unsold stock within six months—freeing up 1.55 million yuan in working capital.

As Beijing doubles down on full-chain mineral control, Lü’s example is a case study in the growing professionalization and internal efficiency ofChina’s rare earth sector, or so reports Gansu Rare Earth New Material Limited Liability Company.

But her rise also prompts hard questions: Is this level of market discipline and strategic foresight being replicated across China's other state-backed rare earth entities? Rare Earth Exchanges (REEx) tracks local industry news in China for the West to learn, given the entrenched industry of the East.

A different culture exists in the Chinese rare earth complex: one that  blends nationalism and talent-led market competitive spirits. In 2025, talent like Lü Jingjing isn’t just advancing careers—it’s quietly recalibrating the future balance of global rare earth power, this media suspects. Hence the importance of the West keeping up with this sector in this part of the world.

Note Gansu Rare EarthNew Material Limited-Liability Company was originally engaged in the smelting and processing of beryllium products before converting to rare earth production. Formerly affiliated with China Nonferrous Metals Industry Corporation, the company became a subsidiary of Northern Rare Earth Group following a reorganization in 2018. Now of course a state-backed entity. The company has developed several industrial chains, including rare earth processing and separation, rare earth metals, rare earth abrasive materials, rare earth hydrogen storage materials, rare earth magnetic materials, rare earth luminescent materials, and chlor-alkali chemicals.

China Northern Rare Earth (Group) High-Tech Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary of Baogang Group. Baogang Group is a state-owned iron and steel company, and Northern Rare Earth is its key player in the rare earth industry. Baogang Group owns both the steel and rare earth industries.