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China Facing 'Peak Minerals'
China will continue to suffer from short supply of mineral resources and the situation could be even worse in the coming two decades, said a leading expert in policy-making.Liu Jiansheng, deputy director of the Policy Research Office under the State Council, made the comments at the third China international symposium on nonferrous metals mining held from Tuesday to Thursday in Xining, capital of northwest China's Qinghai Province. Liu said that China's consumption of minerals would peak in the first 20 years of the century, as the nation planned to quadruple the 2000 level of gross domestic product, or GDP, to 35 trillion yuan (4.32 trillion US dollars) by 2020. To achieve the goal, the nation should ensure an average GDP growth at some 7.2 percent. It is predicted that minerals consumption will outperform the GDP in terms of growth rate during the 20-year-period, Liu said. Official statistics show that 92 percent of the primary energy, 80 percent of raw materials for industrial production and more than 70 percent of raw materials for agricultural production came from mineral resources. According to Liu, China's per-capita mineral resources is equivalent to 58 percent of the world average, ranking the 53rd around the globe. And its per-capita deposit of iron, aluminum and copper was one sixth, one ninth and one sixth, respectively, of the world average. It is predicted that in 2020, shortage of copper will reach 3.57 million tons, while that of aluminum hit 10.55 million tons in China. Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-08-21 |
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