According to CTIA GROUP, on April 30, 2026, China Natural Resources News reported that the “15th Five-Year Plan” period is a key phase for consolidating the foundation for basically achieving socialist modernization and for making comprehensive progress. It is also an important period for achieving high-quality development in the field of geological survey. Over these five years, China will focus on scarce strategic minerals and consolidate the momentum of resource reserve expansion and production increase.
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Currently, the unprecedented global changes not seen in a century are accelerating, profoundly reshaping the global mineral resource landscape, and significantly increasing supply chain uncertainties. Improving the rational exploration, mining, and comprehensive utilization of mineral resources is extremely important and urgently necessary for ensuring national resource security, promoting ecological civilization construction, and achieving high-quality development.
“The country will continue to increase investment in mineral exploration and consolidate the momentum of reserve expansion and production increase. By further implementing the new round of breakthrough strategic actions in mineral exploration, we will improve the coordination system for exploration, production, supply, reserves, and sales of strategic mineral resources, and strengthen monitoring and early warning of strategic mineral resource security risks,” said an official from the Department of Geological Exploration Management of the Ministry of Natural Resources.
In terms of key directions, the focus will be on scarce strategic minerals such as copper, iron, lithium, cobalt, and nickel, while consolidating the resource positions of advantageous minerals such as rare earths, tungsten, and tin. Regarding spatial layout, efforts will be made to strengthen land-sea coordination, actively expand the scope of investigation, exploration, and development, and increase the intensity of basic geological surveys. “By 2030, we aim to submit another batch of developable mineral deposits and quickly form new production capacity,” the official said.
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Basic geological surveys are preliminary work essential for improving understanding of the country’s resource conditions, achieving breakthroughs in mineral exploration, and promoting geological scientific and technological innovation. According to an official from the Resource Evaluation Department of the China Geological Survey, during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period, the China Geological Survey will focus on major oil and gas basins and key mineralization belts, continuing to intensify 1:50,000 basic geological surveys. The plan includes deploying 1:50,000 regional geological surveys and mineral geological surveys over 300,000–500,000 square kilometers, submitting a batch of new exploration areas. Key regions will also conduct 1:25,000 geological survey pilots, with routine delineation of prospective mineralization areas and national resource surveys.
At the same time, overall coordination will be strengthened. Relying on the geological survey work deployment platform, central and local geological survey work will be coordinated. Considering differences in work progress across provinces and regions, central financial support will be increased for key areas such as Tibet and Xinjiang, fully promoting the construction of a modern geological survey system. In addition, the intensity of selective survey and evaluation of survey blocks will be increased to expand exploration block supply; research on national mineral resource surveys, mineral geological records, and prospective mineralization delineation will be deepened; secondary development of archived geological data will be strengthened, and multiple channels for obtaining survey blocks will be explored.
