China antigraft crackdown targets rare-earth producing areas
SHUNSUKE TABETA
BEIJING -- Chinese authorities are ramping up antigraft investigations in regions that produce rare-earth and other critical materials, resources that have become a valuable bargaining chip in countering U.S. trade policy.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Communist Party's anticorruption body, sent a team to the inland province of Jiangxi in mid-April that has since investigated and punished more than 50 executives.
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