Compiling a 'knowledge graph' of the nation's mineral endowment

For 14 years, Wang Denghong woke up at 3:30 am daily and worked on helping compile a mineral encyclopedia, a feat that would top what has arguably been a career filled with rich explorations.

Wang's career began with a doctoral thesis focused on the Ashele Copper Mine located in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Through systematic research, he proposed a view contrary to the then-mainstream opinion that the mine's potential was poor, but his hypothesis was correct. He later channelled his efforts into lithium when it was still considered a "minor metal" in textbooks and helped unlock a 2,800-kilometer belt of it across western China.

Now, after studying and working for 41 years in geology, the 59-year-old director of the Institute of Mineral Resources at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences has one more mission: persuading a new generation to love the search as much as he does.

The compilation of The Annals of Geology of Mineral Resources of China, completed in December 2025, represents Wang's greatest career achievement thus far.

Wang coedited the work alongside his mentor Chen Yuchuan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

The annals do more than catalog the nation's mineral wealth, turning a fragmented century of data into a foundation for artificial intelligence-driven, citizen-powered prospecting.

Launched in 2012 by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the China Geological Survey, the project compiled over a century of prospecting data into a 74,000-page authoritative reference.

"The task was hard, far beyond imagination. Data stretched back more than 100 years, came from over a dozen industries, and came in incompatible standards and fragmented records," Wang said.

To find out how scholars of the past had imposed order on mountains of knowledge, Wang and his colleagues traveled to Ningbo, Zhejiang province, to study related ancient texts. They drew up an entirely new standard, then mobilized more than 4,500 peers from over 630 institutions to comb through the national archive and verify facts on the ground.

"We went from the placer gold of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to the zirconium and hafnium deposits on the coast of South China's Hainan province, from rare-earth deposits weathered out of mountaintops to gold orebodies found 2 kilometers underground, from potash salt in the Gobi Desert to lithium buried in dense forest," Wang said.

In the process, they collected over 4,500 specimens from more than 600 deposits, constructing what Wang calls a "knowledge graph" of China's mineral endowment. It also lays the foundation for AI-assisted prospecting.

"In the future, anybody will be able to take a photograph of a rock with their phone, compare it with our database, and learn whether it's ore and what kind of ore it is. This is the new era version of mineral hunting by the masses," he said.

"I heard that for one field geologist working in Xinjiang, the product was already far more tangible. He took the annals' two-volume gold section, weighing 8 kilograms, into his tent and used it as a prospecting handbook. Upon hearing the story, I felt my 14-year effort worthwhile," Wang added.

Roads less traveled

In 1995, having just completed his doctoral thesis on the Ashele Copper Mine in Xinjiang, Wang arrived at a conclusion that put him at odds with the geological establishment. The prevailing view held that the mine had little exploration potential left. Wang's own analysis told him otherwise — significant orebodies remained at depth.

"The pressure was enormous," he said.

Then his mentor Chen told him something that strengthened his resolve: "Truth is sometimes in the hands of the few." Wang then stayed in the industry. In the 30 years since, Ashele has repeatedly delivered new discoveries at depth, vindicating Wang's stance.

In the 1990s, mining was branded a sunset industry. Wang's classmates and colleagues were leaving in pursuit of business ventures or going abroad. At that unglamorous moment, Wang made an even more unpopular choice. He plunged into the study of rare metals.

Wang has always been drawn to the road less traveled. "That's just who I am. I go where others won't."

By 2000, gold was many prospectors' obsession instead of rare metals.

But he had a conviction that the world would catch up. "Society and the economy were going to develop, and rare metals were bound to find their place. To be a scientist, one needs a certain kind of foresight. You've got to see years ahead. You have to see where technology is heading and what the country is going to need in advance. "

As late as 2002, lithium was still what textbooks referred to as a "minor metal". But Wang had noticed that developed countries were already building lithium-ion batteries into camcorders and cameras.

In 2012, Wang was put in charge of a national survey of rare earth, rare metal and dispersed-element resources. He focused on Jiajika, an area with an altitude above 4,200 meters on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Altitude sickness gave the team splitting headaches and sleepless nights. Environmental regulations meant they could not dig exploration trenches.

Wang came up with bioprospecting. His team collected dried yak dung, plants and water samples, analyzed them for trace amounts of rare elements, and used the results to roughly locate buried veins. In 2013, the first round of drilling hit ore in every hole.

This triggered a breakthrough in prospecting along the 2,800-km-long Asian lithium belt.

"Today, lithium powers mobile phones, electric cars and drones. It has been called 'white petroleum'," he said.

After decades in the field, Wang has achieved his goal of finding "big deposits and good deposits".

But a new worry has given him a new purpose.

"Equipment can be bought, technology can be upgraded. But nurturing young people who love prospecting is the foundation of a strong mining nation. Fewer young people are willing to go into mineral exploration, and those who truly love it — who are really into prospecting — are even fewer."

Over decades, his team has cultivated more than 60 postgraduates, many of whom have become leading figures in the field. "They have proved that the younger generation started later but has come out ahead," Wang said.

"We need more young people to walk into the mountains, into the wilderness. Anyone who wants to challenge themselves, discover hidden treasure, serve the country and benefit humankind, should answer the call."