Copper Resources in China:Today and Tomorrow

Copper is widely utilized in the fields such as electronic industry,machinery,military and agriculture and is definitely indispensable to modernization for a country. In nature,copper exists mainly in such minerals as sulfide,oxide,native copper and copper sulfates,carbonate and silicate. Up to now, about 280 Cu-existing minerals have been discovered,of which 16 minerals are major ones. According to the proportion of Cu-bearing oxide and sulfide in copper ores,the copper ores can be classified as sulfideores in which the proportion of Cu-bearing oxides is less than 10%,mixed-ores which have Cu-bearing oxides is from 10% to 30%,and oxidized ores in which Cu-bearing oxide is more than 30%.In China.the copper deposits are mainly distributed in provinces of Jiangxi,Yunnan,Hubei,Tibet,Gansu,Anhui, Shanxi and Heilongjiang. The general characteristics of these copper deposits are as follows:(1)small scale.(2) dominated by low grade paragenetic and associated ores.(3) porphyry copper is not abundant, which is suitable to be processed at low cost.(4)of the available reserves,the large and high grade copper deposits lie mostly in remote regions,which are difficult to be developed in current economy. In fact,the general situation of copper resources in China is in low reserve,low grade and poor competition in the world. As a whole,the preserved Cu reserve in China is relatively stable,that is,the newly explored reserves are in balances with the consumed reserves. The sharply increasing demand for copper is mainly relied on import.