The Information Office of the State Council issued a white paper titled China's Policy on Mineral Resources Tuesday. (Full text of the white paper )

The 12,500-Chinese character document, the first of its kind, says China will depend mainly on the exploitation of its own mineral resources to guarantee the needs of its modernization drive.

It also points to the importance of sustainable development and the rational utilization of mineral resources while increasing international cooperation in this regard.

The white paper, consisting of seven parts, says that over the past more than five decades since the founding of New China, "a great number of mineral resources have been verified, and a fairly complete system for the supply of mineral products has been established, providing an important guarantee for the sustained, rapid and healthy development of the Chinese economy."

At present, over 92 percent of the country's primary energy, 80percent of the industrial raw and processed materials and more than 70 percent of the agricultural means of production come from mineral resources.

China has discovered 171 varieties of minerals, 158 of them with proved reserves. There are 10 energy-related minerals, including oil, natural gas, coal and uranium, 54 metallic minerals,91 non-metallic minerals and three liquid minerals.

There are nearly 18,000 sites with mineral deposits in China, including more than 7,000 big and medium-sized ones.

In China, it says, the total quantity of the resources is fairly big and there is a fairly complete variety of minerals. However, the per-capita quantity of the resources is small, and there is an imbalance between supply and demand for some of the resources.

"China attaches great importance to sustainable development and the rational utilization of mineral resources, and has made sustainable development a national strategy and the protection of resources an important part of this strategy."

To build a well-off society in an all-round way is China's objective in the first 20 years of the new century, it says, adding that China will depend mainly on the exploitation of its own mineral resources to guarantee the needs of its modernization program.

"The Chinese government encourages the exploration and exploitation of the mineral resources in market demand, especially the dominant resources in the western regions, to increase its domestic capability of mineral resources supply," its says.

It is an important government policy to import foreign capital and technology to exploit the country's mineral resources while making use of foreign markets and foreign mineral resources.

"The Chinese government holds that to have foreign mining companies enter China and Chinese mining enterprises enter other countries to make different countries mutually complementary in resources is of great significance for the common prosperity and healthy development of world mineral resources prospecting and exploitation," the white paper says.

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