China’s dominant position over gallium supply chains extends beyond the raw material itself. A more opaque but similarly consequential constraint lies in the specialized resin technology used to extract gallium from bauxite ore processing.
As previously mentioned, China’s dominance over gallium production is not the result of a monopoly over access to deposits—gallium is fairly abundant—but rather its unmatched ability to extract the metal at scale and at lower cost. Chinese state-backed companies have outpaced global competitors by investing in the energy-intensive, chemically complex, and environmentally taxing process of extracting gallium from the Bayer liquor created during the processing of bauxite ore.
One of the most expensive steps in this process is isolating gallium from ore tailings at volumes that make production commercially viable. Chinese firms have innovated new methods of doing this at lowered costs. In particular, the chemical company Sunresin has developed a proprietary chelating resin tailored for gallium recovery. This resin outperforms older methods in both adsorption capacity and operational lifespan, allowing producers to extract more gallium per cycle with less material degradation.
As a result of China’s dominant domestic gallium industry, Chinese firms can produce these resins with economies of scale that their overseas competitors cannot match. Chinese facilities can thus produce gallium more cheaply and further extend their dominance, creating a positive feedback loop. This high-performance resin is critical to keeping China’s production costs well below what Western producers can match.
The challenge is compounded by the fact that this resin is neither widely manufactured outside of China nor readily substitutable. Sunresin produces as much as 90 percent of the global supply. While other methods of extracting gallium exist, they are more expensive and degrade more quickly, making it difficult for non-Chinese producers to compete with China on price, even under normal market conditions.
Recognizing the strategic value of this technology, Chinese authorities in 2025 quietly expanded their export controls to include the resin itself. A January update added “technologies for extracting gallium metal from alumina mother liquor using ion-exchange or resin methods” (通过离子交换法、树脂法等方法从氧化铝母液中提取金属镓的技术和工艺) to MOFCOM’s export control list. Industry sources have reported that exports of the high-performance resin have ceased entirely due to these new restrictions.
