Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, July 10 (Reporter Wang Libin) — In the first half of 2025, 38 new mineral sites were discovered nationwide, an increase of more than 30% year-on-year. Among them, significant breakthroughs were achieved in the exploration of strategic metals such as uranium, rubidium, gold, cobalt, and manganese, leading to the discovery of a number of large, extra-large, and super-large mineral sites.
According to data released on July 10 by the Office of the New Round of Strategic Mineral Exploration Breakthroughs of the Ministry of Natural Resources, these new discoveries include the province's first super-large uranium mine in Heilongjiang Province; an additional 3.37 million tons of rubidium resources in Xinglong County, Hebei Province, reaching a super-large scale and further consolidating China's advantage in rubidium mining; an additional 27,000 tons of cobalt resources in Longhua County, Hebei Province, reaching a large scale; an additional 22.85 million tons of manganese resources in Songtao Miao Autonomous County, Guizhou Province, reaching a large scale; and an additional 81 tons of gold resources in Tekesi County, Xinjiang, with nearly 100 tons verified in total, reaching a super-large scale.
Besides the more well-known uranium, gold, cobalt, and manganese, rubidium is a rare metal element widely used in high-tech fields such as aerospace, national defense, information technology, biomedicine, and new energy. Rubidium has low melting and boiling points, a property that could potentially convert thermal energy directly into electrical energy.
Preliminary statistics show that in the first half of the year, investment in non-oil and gas mineral exploration nationwide totaled 6.993 billion yuan, up 23.9% year-on-year. Of this, social funds amounted to 3.359 billion yuan, up 28.2% year-on-year, accounting for 48.0% of the total exploration investment, indicating that enterprises are increasingly active in mineral exploration; central and local government funds totaled 3.634 billion yuan, up 20.1% year-on-year. By mineral type, exploration investment in tin, bauxite, tungsten, copper, and phosphorus increased by over 50% year-on-year. Since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Natural Resources has further increased the supply of prospecting rights, issuing 318 strategic mineral prospecting rights in the first half of the year.