Analysis on China's iron ore resources

According to the data from territory resources department, until recently China's proved iron ore reserves were known to account for over 58 billion tons. Meanwhile, the quantity of proved iron deposits is close to 2,000. They are widely spread all over the country, especially in the western and central parts of China. However, according to a recent prospect and analysis; China has actually more than 100 billion tons of iron ore reserves in total. One can not help wondering why only such a little part of the actual reserves is being used. We can explain the reasons of this conflict in two aspects: • In the past, low-level of technology limited prospecting; operating conditions at iron ore mines in general were poor; the importance of prospecting iron ore resources was neglected by the state. • Operating iron ore mine has become a rising business with huge profits in the last ten years, with the continuous global iron ore price increase. Therefore, wider and deeper prospecting works have been started with strong support in recent years. China's iron ore resources have three major characteristics: 1. Types of iron mines are complicated There are at least 7 types of iron ore mines in China. They are magnetite, siderite, limonite, hematite, vanadium-titanium magnetite, spiegeleisen, and mixed ore. Among these iron ore types, magnetite is the current major iron ore resource, with the largest reserves. Apart from magnetite, it is difficult to develop the other types of iron ore mines because of high impurity rate. However, along with the improvement of selecting and smelting technology, it is possible to mine and use more of the other iron ore types in the near future. 2. Absolute majority is of low content Although China's proved quantity of iron ore reserves ranked number 4 worldwide in 2002, most of them have poor ore. The average iron content of iron ore is around 44 percent worldwide, while China's average level is just 33 percent, which is 11 percent lower than the global average. The proved high-grade ore (content more than 50 percent) is only around 1.5 billion tons, accounting for 2.7 percent of the total. Over 97 percent of total iron ore in China is lean ore. 3. Main iron ore resources are spread in central and western China Among the total proved 2000 deposits, 83 percent are located in central and western areas of China (central: 47 percent, western: 36 percent). Only the 17 percent is in the east and coastland. Regarding the iron ore reserves, just 9 percent of the total is located in the east and coastland, and the rest 91 percent are spread in the central and western areas (central: 54 percent, western: 37 percent). Currently, the most serious problems in mining iron ore are disorder and pollution. On one side, many local governments in China fail to take effective measures to manage the mining ore business. On the other side, driven by remarkable iron ore profits, all kinds of economies, even including individuals, arbitrarily develop iron ore mines without overall programming, funds, managing staff and technology – and say nothing of environment protection measures. To resolve the above mentioned problems and protect the limited resources, Chinese government is researching and analyzing the overall situation. The relevant policies and measures are likely to be issued soon. The policies will mainly recall for a stricter supervision by local governments, and encourage mining enterprises to develop new iron ore deposits, but with paying attention to safety of workers and environmental protection.