▲ Mineral exploration in the Chating area of Xuancheng, Anhui Province
China, locked in a mineral resource competition with the United States, has announced the recent discovery of a copper and gold deposit with a scale exceeding 1 million tons.
CCTV and other state media reported today (the 2nd) that the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources announced the previous day that significant progress has been achieved in mineral exploration in the Chating area of Xuancheng, Anhui Province.
The main deposit in this area spans 1.2 kilometers in length and 1.1 kilometers in width, with the lower part of the deposit not yet fully revealed.
It was provisionally estimated that the potential copper resources here exceed those of multiple large-scale mines of the 500,000-ton class or larger, and the potential gold resources also surpass the scale of over a dozen gold mines of the 20-ton class or larger.
Discussions are underway that the estimated scale of the reserves could further increase depending on the progress of future additional surveys.
Citing CCTV, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) explained that this means the copper and gold reserves exceed 1 million tons and 200 tons, respectively.
In China, industrial demand for copper is high in sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, power grids, electric vehicles, and renewable energy, but the country maintains a high reliance on foreign imports.
Gold is used in advanced electronic products and other applications. As geopolitical uncertainties grow and confidence in the U.S. dollar weakens, central banks around the world are tending to increase their holdings of gold as a safe-haven asset.
Consequently, copper and gold prices are soaring. As of the previous day on the London Metal Exchange (LME), the price of copper reached 14,294 dollars per ton (approx. 19.58 million won), and spot gold prices were around 4,430 dollars per ounce (approx. 6.06 million won).
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has also forecasted that global copper supplies could fall short of demand by 25% by 2035.
(Photo: Capture from CCTV, Yonhap News)
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