Scarce resources refer to limited and multipurpose resources. There are fewer and fewer non-renewable resources on the earth, or resources with higher and higher value, such as oil, gold, silver, copper, precious stones and jade, whose regeneration speed can't keep up with human needs.

From a professional point of view, there is a certain range of scarce resources. For example, for our country, the scarce resources are those in China's national construction, which cannot meet the needs of national construction and needs to be imported to a great extent. Such as rare earth, iron ore, gold ore, oil, etc.

Scarce resources, in terms of the number of years of human activities, can not find substitutes in a short time, or the regeneration of scarce resources itself, in order to meet the demand expectation of human infinite desire. According to the viewpoint of western economics, the scarcity of resources will lead to competition, and benign competition will lead to the optimal allocation of resources, thus making up for the limitations brought by the scarcity of resources. On the contrary, the scarcity of resources in economics is a phenomenon that puzzles human beings from beginning to end. The scarcity of resources is a basic proposition of economics. Because of the scarcity of resources, economics came into being.