China steps up management of mineral exploration, mining operation

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, February 24, 2004

China steps up management of mineral exploration, mining operation

China handled nearly 30,000 cases of illegal mining in 2003 in an effort to enhance its management of exploration and mining of the country's mineral recourses.

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China handled nearly 30,000 cases of illegal mining in 2003 in an effort to enhance its management of exploration and mining of the country's mineral recourses.

Statistics released Monday by the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) showed that these included 26,592 cases of mining without licenses, 324 cases of mining with licenses of exploration and 2,488 cases of mining beyond dividing lines.

Meanwhile, the ministry temporarily shut down 13,723 mines as well as suspended or revoked 5,929 licenses of exploration and mining, with 611 people punished according to the criminal law.

Last year, the ministry also closed down a certain number of quarries which had destroyed natural landscape and environment, set up 543 no-mining zones and handled 427 cases of illegally transferring the rights of exploration and mining.

"Currently, there is a heavy imbalance between the supply and demand of energy and some raw materials due to the country's rapideconomic development," said Ye Dongsong, vice-minister of MLR, at a national conference on the management of mineral resources that opened here Monday.

Therefore, greater efforts must be taken to improve the management of mineral resources to ensure the sector develops in asustainable manner, he said.

He pledged that the ministry would continue to crack down on any illegal activities in the sector, especially in the mining of tungsten, tin, antimony, gold and other mineral resources that wereof great importance to the country's economy.

State tightens control on coal mining

China's mineral authority will impose stricter control over coal resources in a move to help develop large-scale coal enterprises, which is believed to focus on the sustainable development of the country's rich coal reserve.

The Ministry of Land and Resources expects to start drafting its first special programme on coal exploitation this year, while carrying out an overall probe into the transferal of land rights for coal mining and the operational practices of various coal mining ventures, Vice-Minister of Land and Resources Ye Dongsong said Monday.

Without spelling out related schedules, Ye promised a national conference which will be attended by provincial mineral authorities from across the country. He said that those operators found guilty of offences in this regard will be subject to severe administrative or criminal punishments.

Zeng Shaojin, director of the Mineral Exploitation Department under the ministry, explained the ministry's moves are in preparation for the country's 18 planned large-scale mining industries, an intention which was outlined earlier by the State Development and Reform Commission.

"We have actually stopped approving new rights for coal mining sites,'' he said.

Zeng expects that approvals will come after the completion of the new programme.

Through the investigation, the ministry also expects to readjust the current distribution of coal mining rights. For example, those found not having won the rights lawfully will be forced out of business.

Zeng also admits the possibility that mining ventures can be stripped of those rights, if the firm does not comply with the new programmes.

Zhang Yong, an expert with the China Coal Industries Association, applauded the move, calling it a "solid'' step by the central government to create a stronger coal industry.

"This is a positive response by the central government to our pleas for better order within the industry,'' he said.

Although the work can only be done through the co-operation of various governmental departments, Zhang said that stricter control at the source by the Ministry of Land and Resources is essential.

Coal mining received extra attention in China last year not only because of high-profile electricity shortages in many advanced areas such as East China's Zhejiang Province, but because of serious workplace accidents.

Official statistics show that 70 per cent of the country's electrical power comes from coal burning.

Zhang believed the operations of hundreds of small and technically backward coal mines is the underlying reason for "slow improvement in the overall production efficiency of the coal industry, as well as poor workplace safety records.''

However, the move also aroused mixed feelings from the country's major coal providers, such as ventures in North China's Shanxi Province.

Wang Xiaoli, general engineer of the Shanxi Provincial Land and Resources Administration, said the ministry might have overlooked one important fact: That non-public coal miners have already been contributing two-thirds of the province's annual coal output, which was 480 million tons last year.

On one side are bustling non-public miners which will soon have no resources to exploit, while on the other are large areas of minerals designated as reserved for State-owned coal mines, which cannot be developed in the near future in view of their present production capacity.

"Whether the move is right will take three to five years to see,'' he said.

Source: Xinhua/China Daily

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