About China Mining News

China Mining News

China Mining News (Chinese: 中国矿业报; pinyin: Zhongguo Kuangye Bao) is a Chinese-language industry newspaper published in Beijing under the China Mining Association, the national body for China's mining sector. It is the specialist newspaper of record for the country's mining industry, covering geological exploration, metal and non-metal mining, mine safety and land rehabilitation, mining rights and resources policy, and the annual China Mining conference and the industry gatherings around it. Its readers are mining executives, geologists, officials and investors — the professional community that explores for, extracts and regulates the mineral resources on which Chinese industry depends.

An industry newspaper under the China Mining Association

The newspaper is published under the China Mining Association, a juridical association approved by the State Council whose membership ranges across the whole mining industry. The association's members include, on a voluntary basis, domestic and overseas mining corporations — including oil fields — geological prospecting enterprises, nationwide and province-level mining industry associations, mining-related scientific research institutes and academies, and mining areas and cities. Its stated principle is to serve mining corporations and the government and to promote the development of the mining industry, acting as a bridge and link between the industry and government. A newspaper published under such a body speaks from inside the sector: it is written by and for the people who run mines, survey deposits and administer mining policy, rather than for a general news audience.

Geological exploration coverage

Exploration reporting is one of the newspaper's core beats. China is a vast territory whose mineral endowment — coal, iron, copper, gold, rare earths and a long list of industrial minerals — has to be continually re-proven as mines deplete and demand shifts toward the strategic minerals of new industries. China Mining News reports on geological survey work, exploration programmes and new discoveries, and on the state geological teams and research institutes that carry out the search for resources at home and, increasingly, abroad. For geologists and exploration managers, its pages are a professional bulletin board on where the industry is looking next and what it is finding.

Mining production and the mining enterprises

Alongside exploration, the newspaper covers production: metal and non-metal mining across China's mining regions, the large state-owned mining groups and the smaller operators who work individual deposits. It reports on mine construction and expansion, on technology for extraction and processing, and on the economics of an industry whose output feeds steel mills, power stations, construction and manufacturing. Because its sponsoring association's membership spans corporations, research institutes and mining cities, the paper's production coverage connects the pit and the plant with the policy and research communities that surround them.

Mine safety reporting

Safety is a permanent theme in Chinese mining journalism, and it is central to this newspaper's remit. China's mines — above all its coal mines — have a long history of accidents, and the long campaign to close unsafe small mines, mechanise production and enforce safety law has been one of the defining stories of the industry. China Mining News covers mine safety and the regulation, inspection and technology intended to deliver it, reporting both on accidents and their investigation and on the safety-management practices the industry is urged to adopt. For the officials and managers who read it, safety coverage is not an occasional news theme but a standing professional obligation.

Land rehabilitation and green mining

The environmental legacy of mining gives the newspaper another major beat: land rehabilitation. Worked-out mines, subsidence areas and waste dumps require restoration, and Chinese policy in recent years has pressed the industry toward what is officially called green mining — development that limits damage and restores the land it uses. The paper reports on rehabilitation projects, on the conversion of exhausted mining land to other uses, and on the environmental standards applied to new projects. Its coverage of the annual industry conversation about green mining — a theme prominent enough to feature in the China Mining Association's international cooperation programme — reflects how thoroughly environmental questions now run through the sector's professional press.

Mining rights and resources policy

Mining in China operates inside a dense framework of state ownership and licensing: mineral resources belong to the state, and the right to explore and extract them is granted, transferred and supervised through the mining-rights system administered under the natural-resources authorities. China Mining News covers mining rights and resources policy as a core subject — the rules on exploration and mining licences, the management of resource reserves, resource taxation and the periodic reforms of mineral-resources administration. Its readers include the officials who run that system and the enterprises that must price, bid for and defend mining rights within it, which makes the paper a channel through which policy changes are explained to the industry they govern.

The China Mining conference

The newspaper reports on the annual China Mining conference and exhibition and the industry gatherings associated with it — the sector's flagship meeting, at which government, Chinese mining companies and international participants discuss investment, cooperation and the direction of the industry. The association behind the newspaper is directly involved in that international-facing work: in October 2026, for example, the China Mining Conference and Exhibition signed a memorandum of understanding with Australia's IMARC conference during IMARC 2026 in Sydney, in a signing attended by the China Mining Association's president, Cheng Liwei, as part of a programme exploring international cooperation, green mining and technological innovation. Conference coverage of this kind is a natural extension of the newspaper's role as the industry's connective tissue.

Strategic minerals and the search abroad

A recurring subject in the paper is China's search for strategic minerals at home and abroad. Chinese demand for minerals such as rare earths, copper and other metals critical to modern industry exceeds what domestic mines can supply at economic cost, and Chinese mining companies have become major investors in projects on several continents. China Mining News reports on that outward search as well as on domestic exploration priorities, and on the supply-security thinking that drives both. For investors among its readers, this coverage links the geology of individual deposits to the national question of resource security.

Readership and place in the trade press

The newspaper's readership — mining executives, geologists, officials and investors — defines its character. It is not sold as general news; it is a working paper for a single industry, read in the offices of mining groups, geological bureaus, associations and government departments. Within China's large system of sector newspapers, each attached to a ministry, association or industrial group, China Mining News occupies the mining niche in the same way that sister papers serve metallurgy, coal or petroleum: as the national newspaper of record for its industry, and as the printed forum in which that industry talks to itself and to the state that regulates it.

The scale of the beat is set by China's official mineral inventory. In October 2026 the Ministry of Natural Resources, with the National Development and Reform Commission, issued a revised Mineral Resources Catalogue — the first major revision of the classification in more than thirty years — listing 174 mineral types and 119 sub-types, divided into energy minerals, metal minerals, non-metal minerals and water-and-gas minerals. The ministry presents the catalogue as the register on which exploration indicators, mining-rights allocation, strategic-mineral protection and resource taxation all depend. A catalogue revision of that kind is precisely the sort of technical, system-wide document that a paper like China Mining News exists to explain to the executives, geologists and officials who must work under it.