As China tightens its export grip, Pakistan’s mineral wealth is back in global focus. This puts to test Pakistan’s promise, politics and the peril to test; and its ability for turning potential into policy, and geology into growth?

Pakistan’s long-buried mineral wealth is once again in the headlines. The country’s rare earth potential — lithium, copper, cobalt, and other strategic minerals — has suddenly become geopolitically significant as global supply chains shift and China clamps down on technology exports.

For decades, Pakistan’s minerals were more a subject of geological reports than of global commerce. Now, with its first commercial shipments of enriched minerals to a US firm and a $500 million strategic agreement signed this year, Pakistan has formally stepped into the critical-minerals arena.

Pakistan’s mineral geography is indeed promising. Rich deposits are scattered across Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Gilgit-Baltistan. Many of these contain rare earth elements (REEs) vital for electric vehicles, wind turbines, semiconductors, and defense systems — resources at the heart of the 21st-century technological race. The Reko Diq and Saindak copper-gold projects have already proved that Pakistan sits atop one of the most mineral-endowed belts in the world. The next frontier is the extraction and processing of REEs — a much more complex business.

Globally, the rare earth sector is no longer just about mining; it’s about technology, processing, and geopolitics. Today, China dominates more than 80 percent of global refining capacity. That stranglehold has prompted the United States, Japan, South Korea, and the EU to diversify supply chains, seeking alternative sources — and........

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