Since October 2024, General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly put forward the issue of promoting international in green mining in important international occasions such as the 16th BRICS Leaders' Meeting, the APEC Business Leaders Summit, and the 19th G20' Summit. He listed it together with international cooperation in green infrastructure, green energy, green industry, and green transportation, and they have become important means to promote the "green" of the entire industrial chain, enrich the "green" content of cooperation, and improve the "gold" content of development.
Green mining has dual attributes of "green and "mining", mainly referring to mineral resources that adopt green and low-carbon technology and management measures in the whole life cycle of mining, processing, use, and recycling and are used for the development of green and low-carbon industries. Its connotation includes "green use" and "green process", covering the concepts of key minerals, key, strategic minerals, strategic key minerals, green mines, and green mining. At the same time, the concept of green mining changes dynamically with the dynamic changes of resource reserves, technology, advantageous industries, and trade pattern. According to the current situation of China's green and low-carbon industry development and the supply and demand of relevant mineral resources, green mining to the mineral resources closely related to the entire industry chain of new energy, new materials, and other green and low-carbon industries.
At present, the world is experiencing changes, with tariff wars and trade wars shrouded in clouds, multilateralism and unilateralism fiercely competing, and the global governance system undergoing profound adjustments. With in-depth development of global green transformation, the demand for green mining is accelerating, which urgently requires deepening international cooperation with resource powers to ensure the safety and stability of's industrial and supply chains, participate in and lead the global green and low-carbon transformation, and shape a domestic and international resource recycling system.
The surge in global for green mining has become a new battlefield for global competition. The new round of technological, energy, and industrial changes is accelerating, and the global green and low-carbon industry has a strategic high ground for great power competition. According to the International Energy Agency, global demand for key minerals will increase dramatically by 2040, among which lithium will increase 42 times, graphite by 25 times, nickel by 19 times, and rare earth by 7 times. The United States has always paid close attention key minerals and has elevated them to a strategic level, frequently updating the list of key minerals and expanding their scope. In the past two years, the European Union has introduced the "ritical Raw Materials Act", and Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada have successively released key mineral strategies, aiming to build a safe and stable local supply chain for key raw. The implementation of similar acts may intensify the global competition for green mining. At the same time, some resource powers have raised the threshold for foreign investment and restricted the export green mining, such as the substantial increase in mineral export tax, mine exploitation tax, and other costs in some African mineral resource countries, which have added many uncertain factors to the security global green mining supply.