At the recent China Mining Congress & Expo in Tianjin, Intierra Resource Intelligence revealed that foreign mining revenue for Chinese companies reached approximately $39 billion in 2010. During a detailed presentation covering Chinese interests in foreign resources, global capital market conditions plus recent mergers and acquisition activity, Stuart Ferguson, showcased figures from the IntierraLive database that indicated China’s direct interest in foreign resources was now $4,168 billion. At FEM in Finland the previous week Magnus Ericsson of Raw Materials Group noted that China was now the world’s top mining country, but that its global investments still trailed behind those of Canada and Australia.
Ferguson stated, “The Chinese direct interest figure highlights China’s growing presence in the global marketplace. Chinese companies are well entrenched across all the different mining geographies and deriving significant revenues from their investments to date.” Ericsson noted China’s major exploration efforts, explaining that it was now the world’s largest exploration spender, but with “no great results.”
Ericsson summarised China’s global role as follows:
- Engine of demand – reduced growth pace
- Largest mining country – many small, high cost mines
- Largest exploration country since 2010
- Foreign expansion slow, not continuous
- Rare earths not a problem – Chinese import dependency for iron ore and copper is!