Mining activities generate important ecosystem damage and more specifically soil degradations and pollution. There is also a growing concern regarding the decline of biodiversity as threat for worldwide ecosystems. Soil biota regulates major ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling or soil structure and has a role in the soil-forming processes. The ecological studies dealing with the impact of mining activities and mine land rehabilitation on soil biota are scarce. There is a need to investigate how biodiversity could be preserved by understanding its adaptation in mine sites in order to help the development of effective and sustainable scenarii of mining ecosystem restoration. In this vain, a project was carried out in abandoned and revegetated Rare Earth Elements (REEs) mine sites from China in the context of the international joint laboratory LIA ECOLAND 'Ecosystem services provided by contaminated lands’ established in 2015 between the University of Lorraine and the Sun-Yat-Sen University. We collected field data to better describe the biodiversity that is able to adapt to special abiotic features on mine sites and determine the major environmental drivers for soil biota recolonization in those sites after abandon or after rehabilitation. Soil invertebrates communities were sampled in 2017 in an experimental REEs mine site revegetated in 2015 with fiber crops (ramie, kenaf). In 2018 a chronosequence was investigated for characterization of communities from REEs mine sites abandoned in 2003, 2007 or 2011. Moreover, we quantified more specifically the roles played by an ecosystem engineer (termites) on soil functions (structure development, organic matter dynamics, nutrients and REEs cycling). Results showed the positive impact of plant soil cover on diversity and abundance of soil organisms, by comparison with bare soil, following different response given the trophic group. The observation of biogenic structures of termites showed that they are composed by a mix of minerals and organic matter, and that fungi help termites to decompose organic matter. Reclamation strategies of REEs mine sites by revegetation in China appeared to have positive impact on soil communities depending of organisms ’ recolonization capacity. Furthermore, invertebrates have feedbacks on ecosystem functioning, which has to be taken in account for sustainability of SUITMA restoration plan.