(AP) SHANGHAI - China has set up a rare earths industry association to fend off trade complaints and help promote development of the sector that is critical to high-tech manufacturing globally.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the group's founding Sunday, saying it would coordinate mining, smelting and processing and seek to form a "reasonable price mechanism" for the materials, used in many high-tech applications.
China has about a third of the world's rare earth reserves but supplies about 90 percent of what is consumed.
It has imposed limits on its exports, citing a need to impose order on an unruly domestic market and to reduce environmental damage, raising protests from Japan, the U.S. and other countries relying on supplies from China.
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