Critical Minerals Boost Sustainable Development

Since the beginning of the14th Five-Year Plan period（2021-2025）， China’sinvestment in mineralexploration has continued togrow， effectively enhancing itsresource sustainability. Today，China has become the world’slargest producer， consumer，and trader of mineral products，playing a stabilizing role in thesupply of some critical minerals.This achievement can beattributed to China’s abundantresource reserves as well as itsprogressing mineral developmentand processing technologies.According to statistics fromthe China Non-ferrous MetalsIndustry Association， thecountry’s production of 10commonly used non-ferrousmetals reached nearly 74.7million tons in 2023， exceedingthe 70-million-ton mark forthe first time. In terms of rareearths， China’s share of the globaloutput of rare earth smeltingand separation products andrare earth functional materialsexceeded 90 percent and 75percent， respectively.

China possesses the largestproven reserves of lithiummica in the world and has theonly enterprise in the globallithium industry wielding theindustrialized technologies toextract lithium from brine andore while performing lithiumrecycling at the same time. Thisenterprise has the productioncapacity of more than 40 types oflithium compounds and metalliclithium products in five majorcategories.

In 2023， China’s naturalgraphite output wasapproximately 1.2 million tons，accounting for 77 percentof the global total. On theprocessing side， China boastsa well-developed graphiteindustrial chain with morethan 90 percent of the world’sspherical graphite processingcapacity and 85 percent ofanode material productioncapacity.

In recent years， China hascontinued to consolidate itsdominant position in the globalcritical minerals sector， not onlyproviding strong support for itsown economic development butalso making great contributionsto the green transformation andsustainable development of theglobal economy.