Highlights
- Myanmar supplies over 60% of China's heavy rare earth imports through militia-controlled mines, but 2025 rebel attacks cut imports by 90%, exposing critical supply fragility.
- Sudan's conflict gold flows through Dubai's refining hub into global markets, creating reputational and regulatory risks across the precious metals supply chain.
- Investors face not just ethical concerns but material risks: supply interruptions, regulatory shocks, and price volatility when conflict-zone sourcing becomes politically untenable.
Nicholas Oakes’ essay “Blood and Resources (opens in a new tab)” makes a sweeping claim: that the world’s green and gold transitions are being built on the wreckage of Myanmar and Sudan. For rare earth and conflict-gold investors, the question is simple: how much is rhetoric, and how much is supply-chain reality?
Table of Contents
Acid in the Hills: Where the Myanmar Story Rings True
On Myanmar’s rare earth boom, the core facts are solid. Since China cracked down on its own polluting ionic-clay mines, extraction has surged across the border in militia-controlled Kachin and Shan, using in-situ leaching that injects acidic solutions into hillsides. Reports from Global Witness, Yale E360, EarthRights and others document poisoned rivers, landslides, and workers buried in chemically weakened terrain.
Chinese customs and think-tank analyses confirm that between 2017 and 2024, Myanmar became China’s primary external source of heavy rare earths, supplying more than 60% of import value in some years.
Where Oakes slides into overstatement is the phrase “hidden engine of the world’s tech economy.” True Myanmar rebels heavy rare earth element holdings top the Rare Earth Exchanges list for heavies, but Myanmar represents a critical heavy-REE spigot (dysprosium, terbium), not the main source of total rare earth tonnage. And as of early 2025, rebel attacks and border closures have already cut Chinese imports from Myanmar by nearly 90%, exposing just how fragile that “engine” really is.
Dubai’s Glow: Conflict Gold, but a Wider Web
In Sudan, the piece echoes a growing body of work linking RSF-controlled “conflict gold” to the UAE’s refining and trading hub. UN panels, Global Witness, Chatham House, and investigative media all show Dubai as a central node for Sudanese gold moving into global markets, even as the UAE denies deliberate complicity.
The essay fairly captures the pattern—armed groups monetize resources; a permissive trading hub launders them into the world system. What it downplays is that downstream buyers are not just “external powers,” but a distributed ecosystem of banks, refiners, luxury brands, and central banks that accept opaque gold.
Moral Fury vs. Market Structure: The Real Investor Signal
Oakes’ strongest bias is tonal: a universal moral indictment with limited granularity about who in the chain has leverage to change outcomes. Blame is aimed at China and the UAE; less attention is paid to Western and Asian OEMs, magnet makers, refiners, and funds that continue to buy heavy REEs and gold with minimal traceability.
For rare earth investors, the key takeaway is not just that Myanmar is a “sacrifice zone,” but that heavy-REE supply is structurally exposed to war economies and sudden shutdowns. For gold, Sudan illustrates how conflict metal can remain systemically important even while sanctions and litigation swirl in the background.
The real risk is not just reputational; it’s supply interruption, regulatory shock, and price whiplash when sacrificial zones finally become politically untenable.
© 2025 Rare Earth Exchanges™ – Accelerating Transparency, Accuracy, and Insight Across the Rare Earth & Critical Minerals Supply Chain.
At the moment for most mid-chain and OEMs there’s not too much choice but to buy from Chinese magnet makers supplied by Myanmar HRE upstream. With RE sector diversification moving to prodcution then Myanmar ESG non-compliance may be a criterion by which the US/ROW can limit access of such feedstock-reliant consumer products entry to western consumer markets. However, RE retail investors looking to invest in Western RE wannabees don’t seem to face the ethical dilemma this article talks about. GLTA – REI