All the back to the land decentralized survivalists solarpunk people can do just about everything except for rare earth refining. That's the part of solarpunk that can only happen in China because nobody anywhere wants that in their backyard. One of the more interesting political/economic questions is can a non-authoritarian country that values environmental protection do rare earth refining, or is the ecological harm in isolation too abhorrent to the members of the community where it is done to counterbalance the ecological good it does elsewhere? In an authoritarian country, you can just tell the people who live around the processing plant to relocate or suffer because it helps the environment elsewhere. In a non-authoritarian country, the local people will all reject it because it will degrade the quality of life and their land. This has been happening in the backlash against mining in Madagascar for example.