China's has only discovered 35% of mineral resources to date

China's current proven mineral reserves are estimated at only about 35% of the country's total, according to the latest prospecting results from the China Geology Survey Bureau (GGS) released at the Ministry of Land and Resources-organized China Mining 2007 conference, held in Beijing yesterday.

The CGS, under the supervision of the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR), announced at the conference that China's current proven reserves of iron, copper, aluminum, lead, zinc, manganese, niobium, tungsten, tin and gold are estimated to account for between 26% to 59% of the country's total reserves.

The bureau has made numerous discoveries along the Eastern Tethys Copper Belt in the Tibet Autonomous Region, which are estimated to contain in excess of 50 million tonnes of probable copper resource reserves.

A large number of lead and zinc deposits have been discovered in the Yangtze Craton, which covers Shaanxi, Hubei and Hunan provinces, as well as the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, estimated to contain possible lead and zinc reserves totaling 20 million tonnes.

Finally, only about 49% of China's iron ore reserves have been discovered to date, leaving an estimated 70 billion tonnes of undiscovered reserves. – Interfax