China Tops World in Reserves of 14 Minerals, Report Says

China ranks first in the world for reserves of 14 minerals — including rare earths, tungsten, tin and molybdenum — and sits among the global top four for another nine, according to a government report released at a major mining conference. The findings, published by the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) in its China Mineral Resources Report 2026, underscore Beijing’s dominant position across the critical minerals that underpin semiconductors, electric vehicles, aerospace and defense.

As of the end of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), the country led the world in reserves of rare earths, tungsten, tin, molybdenum, antimony, gallium, germanium, indium, fluorite and graphite, among others, Xinhua News reported. It ranked among the top four globally for coal, iron, manganese, titanium, lithium, zinc, phosphorus and magnesite.

A Resource Base and a Processing Chokepoint

The reserves data was unveiled alongside the Global Mining Development Report 2026 at the 2026 China Mining Conference and Exhibition on September 11. MNR officials framed the results as the payoff of a strategic prospecting campaign launched in 2021.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan, China discovered 398 large and medium-sized strategic mineral deposits, including 225 oil and gas fields, according to the 21st Century Business Herald. In 2025 alone, the country recorded 200 new non-oil-and-gas mineral occurrences — 63 large, 57 medium and 80 small — with gold (16), iron ore (11) and coal (9) leading the count.

“As of the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan, China ranks first in the world for reserves of 14 minerals… and among the top four for nine minerals,” said Xiong Zili, director of MNR’s Geological Exploration Management Department.

China’s advantage extends well beyond what lies underground. In 2025, it ranked first globally in output of 17 minerals, including coal, vanadium, titanium, zinc, rare earths, tungsten, tin and graphite, the report said. Eleven of those — among them rare earths, tungsten, antimony, gallium and indium — accounted for more than 50 percent of global output.

The chokehold is even tighter in downstream processing. China’s manganese smelting products represent 99 percent of global supply, rare-earth smelting products 94 percent, aluminum 60 percent, steel 53 percent and copper 47 percent, according to the report. More than 30 metallurgical products rank first worldwide.

“This shows China is not only a major mineral producer but also the dominant supplier and key leader in global smelting and processing,” Xiong said.

Mining Moves Toward an AI-Driven Future

At the conference, MNR also unveiled two artificial-intelligence systems aimed at sustaining that advantage as easier deposits are depleted.

The “Intelligent Geological Mapping” system digitizes nearly a century of geological mapping knowledge into a computable database, using deep learning to identify relationships between geological objects. Its accuracy in identifying geological bodies exceeds 90 percent, and it improves data-processing and mapping efficiency by more than 50 percent versus traditional methods, officials said.

The “Intelligent Prospecting” system, meanwhile, integrates a knowledge graph of more than one million geological background, metallogenic, deposit and prediction models with over 200 data-processing algorithms, according to 21st Century Business Herald. At the West Qinling gold mine, it completed in five days work that previously took more than a month, identifying two gold prospecting targets and four favorable areas.

“The ‘Intelligent Prospecting’ system… can drive geological prospecting from ‘experience-driven’ toward ‘intelligence-driven,’” said Qu Honggang, deputy director of the Natural Resources Comprehensive Survey Command Center at the China Geological Survey.

Global Times reported that the AI-OreSeeking system can boost prospecting efficiency by more than 60 percent compared with traditional manual processing, and that China Geological Survey is already discussing applications with Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan.

Green Mining and a Global Race

Beijing is also promoting a greener model. During the 14th Five-Year Plan, China restored 223,000 hectares of historical abandoned mines, exceeding its target by 19.6 percent, and built more than 5,500 green mines. In 2025, the central government allocated 5.15 billion yuan for ecological protection and restoration, Xinhua reported.

Equipment such as autonomous mining trucks and large AI models for mining is being exported as “Chinese solutions” for the global industry’s green and intelligent transformation, per Global Times.

Yet the report lands at a moment of growing competition over critical minerals. According to CCTV News via China Daily, global solid mineral exploration investment fell for a fourth consecutive year in 2025, to US$12.4 billion, with grassroots (greenfield) prospecting shrinking to 20.8 percent of the total.

“Supply chains are shifting from ‘efficiency first’ to ‘security first,’ and countries are placing critical minerals in more strategic positions,” said Zou Xiehua, who headed the Global Mining Development Report 2026 writing group.

China has sought to cast itself as a partner rather than a bottleneck. It has signed geological and mining cooperation memorandums with more than 70 countries, and its Initiative for International Economic and Trade Cooperation on Green Mining and Minerals — proposed jointly with South Africa — gained support from more than 30 countries and international organizations at the 2025 G20 summit, Global Times reported. The country has also run more than 310 training programs, reaching over 8,600 people from more than 140 countries.

What’s Next

The reserves and processing data reinforce a strategic reality: even as Western economies pursue “de-risking” and stockpiling of critical minerals, China’s position at the base of global supply chains remains deeply entrenched. China’s 2024 Mineral Resources Law and its implementing rules, effective June 15, 2026, codify full-chain management for 36 strategic minerals, adding a regulatory layer to the country’s resource leverage.

For investors and policymakers, the key questions now are whether AI-driven exploration can offset the depletion of high-grade deposits, and whether global cooperation on green mining can temper a supply chain increasingly organized around national security. China’s answer, signaled at its flagship mining conference, is that it intends to keep — and extend — its lead.