Digging deeper: Understanding the global Chinese mining sector
China’s economic growth in the past two decades – which has been driven largely by investment and exports – has resulted in large increases in China’s production of, and demand for, mineral commodities. In this context, China has become the world’s leading producer and consumer of many mineral commodities. Since 2018, the value of China’s overseas investment in the metals sector has been estimated at US$60 billion (or 16 per cent of its total overseas investment).
China has an important role to play in ensuring the transition to cleaner sources of energy. The Chinese government, like much of the world, has set ambitious targets for renewable energy production increasing the mineral demand necessary for cleaner technologies. Many of the overseas Chinese mining companies are amongst the dominant players of key transition minerals, that is, minerals needed for the cleaner energy technologies.
This new research focuses on the Chinese global mining sector and identifies 81 Chinese mining companies involved in 180 projects globally. It explores challenges common to the global mining sector, not only Chinese mining companies, and provides a series of policy recommendations for stakeholders wanting to improve the transparency, accountability, integrity, and social and environmental performance of Chinese interests in the global mining sector, and the sector overall.