China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is considering plans to raise thresholds for the rare earth industry and enact technical standards for refining enterprises, Shanghai Securities News reported.

A symposium was held in Beijing to solicit opinions from related parties on the access mechanism, which is aimed at optimizing resources distribution and strengthening the rare earth industry.

The draft requires refining enterprises to achieve a recycling rate of 92 percent from concentrates to misch metals and 95 percent from misch metals to single rare earth metals.

The draft also requires rare earth processing projects that are valued above 100 million yuan to get approval from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology before starting.

China is now the world's largest producer, exporter and consumer of rare earth resources. China's reserves total 80 percent of the world's discovered rare earth resources, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Rare earth, which includes minerals such as dysprosium, terbium, thulium, lutetium and yttrium, is widely used in the fields of electronics, aviation, atomic energy, and mechanical manufacturing.