Two things to remember when answering your question Wee. First and most important, profit of individual companies is secondary to the chinese govt. as long as it benefits in other ways. Pricing is so opaque and these state owned or subsidised companies are so vertically integrated that profit or govt kickbacks can come at any part of the supply chain for magnets, etc. Second and pertinent to your question, no one knows exactly how much rare earth the chinese govt stockpiles contain, so I'm thinking that if they really had to, they could sustain very low or very high prices for as long as it suited them. Hence the dominance. They control. Which is why Amanda would like to see a greater concentration of supply outside China, to challenge that dominance and break the connection to china prices.
Having said that, with all the recent heat on china for overcapacity in nearly everything they do, maybe they will exercise some restraint when it comes to their oversupply of rare earths. Still need to mop up all that supply from their third quota last year.
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