Chinese Mining Interests and the Arctic

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s, double-digit gross domestic product (GDP) growth has driven the Chinese economy from an agrarian peasant base to the manufacturing center of the world, its economy now second in size only to the United States. This industrial expansion has, naturally, been accompanied by an explosion in resource consumption. China accounts for about one-fifth of the world’s population, yet consumes half of its cement, one-third of its steel, over a quarter of its aluminum, two-thirds of its iron ore, and more than 45 percent of its coal.¹ In only the past 13 years, China has also swallowed up over four-fifths of the increase in the world’s copper supply.² For most of the country’s fantastic growth, its own vast resources proved sufficient to support its industrial expansion. In the past decade, however, China has recognized the need to augment these supplies with foreign sources, and Chinese companies, normally state-owned enterprises (SOEs), have tapped into the vast reserves of the state and state-owned banks (SOBs) to secure access to mineral deposits abroad.