Abstract: Accounting for the environmental costs of rare earth (RE) exploitation provides critical information for pricing reform of RE mining industry in China. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the environmental costs of RE refining, and to analyze their spatial difference characteristics based on the method of environmental abatement cost under the consideration of China's RE resources characteristics in 2013(the study area does not include Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). Data were collected from the National Pollutants Sources Census as well as Rare Earth Statistics Yearbook 2013. The results indicated:(1) refining of RE caused severe environmental pollution:air pollution in North China and water pollution with particularly high ammonia nitrogen emission in South China due to the differences in the rare earth element concentration in minerals. (2) Environmental abatement costs of RE refining were up to 2.87×10⁸ RMB in 2013. Depending on the type of pollution caused in which RE refining process, the environmental abatement costs were varied. Costs of pollution for water, air and solid waste were 1.43×10⁸, 5.5×10⁷, 8.9×10⁷ RMB respectively. In terms of regional disparity, mines in North China accounted for 92.9% of the total environmental abatement costs, and 7.1% for South China. (3) As for environmental cost of per unit of rare earth oxides (REO), the cost for mines in North China (typically mines in Baotou City, Inner Mongolia) was 4135 RMB/t, which comprised 38.8% of the market price of lanthanum oxide and 41.4% of the market price for cerium oxide. As for the environmental abatement costs per REO, the cost for a typical REO in South China's mines was 2824 RMB/t, accounting for 10.9% of yttrium oxide's market price.