The decomposition of bastnaesite and monazite has been studied for many years. In this study, a novel Coal-Ca(OH)2 -NaOH-roasting strategy for Bayan Obo tailings has been proposed. This paper focused on investigating the roasting process of tailings. The effect of various parameters, such as roasting temperature, roasting time, coal dosage, Ca(OH)2 dosage and NaOH dosage, were investigated. The optimum technological parameters for roasting on tailings were obtained as roasting temperature of 650 °C, roasting time of 60 min, coal dosage of 2%, Ca(OH)2 dosage of 4% and NaOH dosage of 2%. After roasting, the leaching ratio of rare earth oxides and magnetic susceptibility of hematite was 90.14% and 2.37, respectively, and the escaping ratio of fluorine decreased by over 95% compared with that during the roasting without additives.