The Ministry of Natural Resources releases the "China Mineral Resources Report (2025)".

On October 23, 2025, at the China International Mining Conference, the Ministry of Natural Resources released the "China Mineral Resources Report (2025)". The report revealed that in 2024, China's geological exploration investment reached 115.994 billion yuan, marking four consecutive years of positive growth. Since the start of the "14th Five-Year Plan", nearly 450 billion yuan has been invested in mineral exploration, and 150 new mineral deposits have been discovered nationwide. The report focused on the new changes in China's mineral resource policies and regulations since 2024, new developments in the strategic breakthrough in mineral exploration, new dynamics in the development and protection of mineral resources, green mining development, and technological innovation and international cooperation in the field of mineral resources. In 2024, China continued to deepen the reform of mineral resource management and further improve the governance system of mineral resources. The new "Mineral Resources Law of the People's Republic of China" has made a series of innovative institutional provisions to ensure national mineral resource security, protect the legitimate rights and interests of mining rights holders, create a fair, transparent, and predictable market competition environment, and promote the construction of an ecological civilization. At the same time, the Ministry of Natural Resources has increased policy supply, comprehensively strengthened the guidance and control of mineral resource planning, deepened geological exploration, management of mineral reserves, market-based allocation of mining rights, geological data management, and tax and fee reforms, continuously optimized the direction of foreign investment, and laid a solid institutional foundation for improving resource security and promoting high-quality development of the mining industry. The report showed that China's new round of strategic breakthrough in mineral exploration has made important progress, further solidifying the foundation of mineral resources. Significant breakthroughs have been made in key mineralized areas and large oil and gas basins: in the oil and gas sector, major breakthroughs have been made in new stratigraphy, new ore belts, and new types in the Tarim Basin, Junggar Basin, Sichuan Basin, among others. In non-oil and gas mineral resources, significant progress has been made in the exploration of major mineral resources such as copper, iron, and phosphorus, with a substantial increase in reserves; strategic mineral resources such as lithium, zirconium, hafnium, rare earths, and helium have made progress in exploration, while the resource advantages of tungsten, molybdenum, antimony, fluorite, graphite, and other minerals have been consolidated. In 2024, 150 new mineral deposits were discovered nationwide, with 49 large, 54 medium, and 47 small deposits. The top-ranked newly discovered minerals were common fluorite (9), lithium ore (8), gold ore (8), and iron ore (8). Fixed asset investment in the mining industry has grown for four consecutive years, with stable and increasing supply of major mineral products, making important contributions to maintaining the stability of the global industrial supply chain. In 2024, fixed asset investment in the mining industry continued to grow, increasing by 10.5% compared to the previous year. The production of ten non-ferrous metals continued to grow, and the production of energy minerals such as coal, crude oil, and natural gas reached new historical highs. Promoting green mining development and actively implementing the United Nations' "2030 Sustainable Development Agenda". In 2024, China comprehensively implemented green exploration, promoted the upgrade of technology and equipment and demonstrated applications; accelerated the construction of green mines, improved standards and regulations, and improved management of directories; promoted comprehensive conservation and utilization of mineral resources, released and implemented "three rate" standards for 125 mineral species, leading to international levels of comprehensive utilization of mineral resources; improved the legal system of incentives and constraints for ecological restoration in mining areas, solidly promoting the ecological restoration of historical abandoned mining areas, improving the ecological conditions and surrounding living environment of mining areas; strengthening investigation, monitoring, and evaluation of ecological restoration in mining areas, promoting the construction of a technical standard system for ecological restoration in mining areas, and publishing a batch of typical cases of ecological restoration of productive mines. Enhancing technological innovation in the field of mineral resources and improving resource security support capabilities. In 2024, China issued and implemented 10 national standards and 85 industry standards in the field of mineral resources, and the deep-sea major scientific special projects were officially launched and implemented, with the initiation of the "Deep Time Digital Earth" international grand scientific plan. Various scientific and technological innovation platforms focus on basic theoretical research, key technology research, and engineering research and development, actively serving major strategic tasks in the field of mineral resources such as the new round of strategic breakthroughs in mineral exploration. At the same time, China has strengthened international cooperation in the mining industry to promote the prosperity of the global mining market. Various forms of international exchanges and cooperation in the field of mineral resources are continuing, actively maintaining contacts with relevant energy and resource countries and international organizations, promoting practical cooperation in the field of geological mining through international exchange platforms such as the China International Mining Conference, further solidifying friendly cooperation relationships; opening up access to foreign markets, continuously improving the level of openness in the mining sector.