On October 23, at the 2025 China International Mining Conference, the Ministry of Natural Resources released the "China Mineral Resources Report (2025)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"). The Report shows that in 2024, China's geological exploration investment reached 115.994 billion RMB, achieving positive growth for four consecutive years, with a cumulative investment of nearly 450 billion RMB in mineral exploration during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period; a total of 1,50 new mineral deposits were discovered nationwide.

The report focuses on the new changes in China's mineral resources policy and regulations since 2024, the new progress in the new round of mineral resources breakthrough strategy action, the new dynamics of mineral resources development, utilization and protection, mining green development, and the new achievements in scientific and technological innovation and international cooperation in the field of mineral resources.

In 2024, China continued to deepen the reform of mineral resources management, and the governance system of mineral resources was further improved and perfected. The new "Mineral Resources Law of the People's Republic of China" revolves around ensuring the security of national mineral resources, effectively safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of mining right holders, creating a fair, transparent and predictable market competition environment, and deeply promoting the construction of ecological civilization, making a series of innovative institutional regulations. At the same time, the Ministry of Natural Resources increased policy supply, comprehensively strengthened the planning, guidance and control of mineral resources, deepened geological exploration, mineral resources reserve management, market-oriented allocation of mining rights, geological data management and tax and fee reform, continuously optimized the foreign investment orientation, and laid a solid institutional foundation for improving resource security and promoting high-quality development of the mining industry.

The report shows that China's new round of strategic actions for mineral exploration have made significant progress, further solidifying the country's mineral resources. A series of major breakthroughs have been achieved in key ore-bearing belts and large oil and gas basins: In terms of oil and gas mineral resources, significant breakthroughs have been made in new strata, new belts, and new types in the Tarim Basin, Junggar Basin, Sichuan Basin, etc.; for non-oil and gas mineral resources, the exploration of copper, iron, and phosphate mines has shown significant results, with a substantial increase in resource reserves; strategic mineral resources such as lithium, zirconium, hafnium, rare earths, and helium have made progress, and the resource advantages of tungsten, molybdenum, antimony, fluorite, and graphite have been further consolidated. In 2024, 150 new mineral deposits were discovered across the country, including 49 large, 54 medium, and 47 small deposits; the minerals with the highest number of new discoveries include common fluorite (9 deposits), lithium mines (8 deposits), gold mines (8 deposits), and iron mines (8 deposits).

The fixed asset investment in the mining industry has increased for four consecutive years, the supply of major mineral products has remained stable and increased, and it has made important contributions to maintaining the stability of the global industrial and supply chains. In 2024, the fixed asset investment in China's mining industry continued to grow, increasing by 10.5% over the previous year. The output of 10 kinds of non-ferrous metals has continued to grow, and the output of coal, crude oil, natural gas and other energy mineral resources has set new historical highs.

Promoting the green development of the mining industry and actively implementing the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In 2024, China fully implemented green exploration, promoted the upgrading and demonstration application of technical equipment; accelerated the construction of green mines, improved the standards and norms, and perfected the list management; promoted the comprehensive conservation and rational utilization of mineral resources, and issued and implemented the "three rates" standards for 125 types of mines, and the comprehensive utilization level of mineral resources reached the international leading level; improving the legal system of ecological restoration incentives and constraints in mining areas, solidly promoting the ecological restoration of historical abandoned mining areas, and promoting the improvement of the ecological situation in mining areas and the surrounding living environment; strengthening the investigation, monitoring, and evaluation of ecological restoration in mining areas, promoting the construction of technical standards for ecological restoration in mining areas, and issuing a number of typical cases of ecological restoration in production mines.

Strengthen scientific and technological innovation in the field of mineral resources and enhance the capacity to support resource security. In 2024, China issued and implemented 10 national standards and 85 industry standards in the field of mineral resources, and the major scientific and technological special project of deep earth was officially approved and implemented, and the international large-scale scientific project of "Deep Time Digital Earth" was launched and implemented. Various scientific and technological innovation platforms focused on basic theoretical research, key technology research and engineering research and development, and actively served the new round of strategic actions such as the breakthrough of mineral resources.

At the same time, China strengthens mining international cooperation to promote the prosperity of the global mining market. We will continue to carry out international exchanges and cooperation in the field of mineral resources in various ways, actively maintain contact with relevant energy and resource countries and international organizations, promote practical cooperation in the field of geological mineral resources through the China International Mining Conference and other international exchange platforms, and further consolidate the friendly cooperative relationship; Relaxing foreign capital market access, the level of opening up in the mining field is constantly improving.

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