With increasing environmental pollution caused by the rare earth production, the environmental regulations are the key to the sustainable development and the international competitiveness of the rare earth industry in China. This paper reviews the development of the environmental regulations in China, the United States and Australia and compares some key aspects, including the safety management of the radioactive pollutants, the land reclamation, the air pollution management and the environmental taxes, and the main findings are as follows. (1) In China, the system of the environmental laws and regulations for the rare earth industry has been gradually established since 2012, containing effectively the spread of the environmental pollution, while somehow affecting the supply of the rare earths. (2) In the United States and Australia, regulations were established earlier, as high environmental barriers for the production of the rare earths. Accordingly, the producers of the rare earths and the related downstream industries shifted their business to other countries, which poses challenges for the United States and Australia to restore their production of the rare earths. (3) To reduce the high cost caused by the environmental regulations, based on the international trade, the United States and Australia have established three channels of transferring the environmental pollution, i.e., the production capacity transfer, the decree transfer and the production pattern transfer. As a result, countries such as Malaysia were driven to undertake severe environmental costs. Based on these international perspectives, we highlight the importance of the lessons learned in other countries such as the United States and Australia, and the improvement of the measures for regulating the rare earth industry in China and the global rare earth environmental governance system, in order to reduce the environmental pollution and to rationally optimize the global supply chain of the rare earths.

environmental regulations  /  environmental management  /  pollution transfer  /  rare earths