It is interesting but not perfectly related. Neodymium and praseodymium are the rare earth elements used predominantly for making powerful magnets and they are part of the LREE group, rather than the HREE group. (Your news is actually probably more significant though, because Nd/Pr are needed in greater quantities than HREEs and, if that new synthetic mineral can be produced in large quantities, that would be very important.)

China has a near monopoly on production of both HREE & LREEs.

With LREEs, China benefits from a very significant natural abundance of Nd/Pr at an old iron ore mine called Bayan Obo. That deposit has such good grades and quantities, as well as basically being a free biproduct of the iron ore production, that it just ends up naturally with incredibly low production costs.

With HREEs China maintains a production cost advantage because they don't have as strong of environmental regulations. This is where this article and associated propaganda come in. For decades Chinese producers have just dumped chemicals directly in the ground and collected the pregnant leachate from downstream, disregarding the environmental impacts but basically taking the cost of mining (blasting, digging, trucking) out of the equation. Now they're probably trying to greenwash the in situ extraction method by claiming this kind of process is being used.