Geopolitical Mining · China

China’s Mineral Security Playbook Moves Into Law

What Beijing’s new Mineral Resources Regulation tells us about geology, project control, strategic reserves and supply chain defense

By Marta Rivera Muñoz & Eduardo Zamanillo

Geopolitical Mining. May 26, 2026

China’s new Implementation Regulation of the Mineral Resources Law of the People’s Republic of China should not be read as a narrow mining rule. It is the legal machinery behind a broader mineral security system. At the legal level, the Regulation sets rules for mineral rights, exploration permits, mining licenses, land use, ecological restoration, reserves, supervision, foreign investment and penalties. But its real significance is wider. It shows how China is organizing minerals as a complete system: geology, ownership, planning, rights, data, production, ecology, reserves, emergency response, trade, investment and national security.

From a Geopolitical Mining perspective, this is the central point. The mine is not the only unit of analysis. It is one node inside a larger architecture of material power. The Regulation was approved by the State Council on May 9, 2026, issued as State Council Order No. 839, signed by Premier Li Qiang on May 15, 2026, and enters into force on June 15, 2026. It implements the revised Mineral Resources Law, which became effective on July 1, 2025.

Its timing matters. China is entering the 2026–2030 policy cycle with strategic resources, economic security, industrial resilience and emergency supply capacity positioned at the center of national development. The Regulation gives that direction a mineral governance framework.

Timeline: From State Ownership to Strategic Mineral Governance

Mineral policy is becoming a working system

The legal foundation is ownership. China’s Mineral Resources Law states that mineral resources belong to the state, and that the State Council exercises ownership on behalf of the state. It also states that state ownership of mineral resources is independent from ownership or use rights over the land to which those resources are attached.

That premise matters, but it should be read carefully. State ownership of minerals is not unusual in global mining. In many resource jurisdictions, the state, the Crown, the nation or the public domain owns minerals in situ, while companies obtain exploration or mining rights through concessions, leases, licenses or administrative grants. In that sense, China’s ownership model belongs to a broader family of mineral governance systems.

The more important point is how China is operationalizing that ownership base. In China’s legal framework, a mining right is a granted access right within a state-owned resource system. It is protected by law, but it operates inside a broader architecture of public ownership, planning, supervision and strategic security.

This explains the Regulation’s logic. The text is defining how private, state-owned, local, national and foreign actors can operate inside a mineral system ultimately anchored in state ownership. It gives structure to rights and permits, while keeping mineral security as the organizing principle. The law also places mineral development under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the overall national security concept. It calls for coordinating development and security, domestic and international considerations, and principles of security, conservation, technology support and green development.

That language is part of the operating environment. Mineral policy is treated as a component of China’s security-development doctrine. The Regulation translates that doctrine into practical rules for geological work, mining rights, permits, reserves, ecological restoration, foreign investment and emergency response.

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From the 15th Five Year Plan to geological execution

The Regulation should be read together with China’s 15th Five Year Plan. In the chapter on national economic security, the Plan calls for stronger exploration, development and reserves of strategic mineral resources. It also calls for a new round of mineral prospecting breakthroughs, stronger product, capacity and origin site reserves, commodity storage and transport bases, and improved risk monitoring, early warning and emergency supply capacity for strategic minerals.

The Plan gives the strategic direction. The Regulation creates the execution framework. That framework begins before the mine. China is not only regulating existing mineral assets. It is strengthening the knowledge base from which future assets become identifiable, classifiable and developable. The Regulation increases state investment in basic geological surveys, strengthens geological survey teams, encourages the orderly participation of social forces and establishes systems for technical standards, quality control, data publication and confidentiality review. It also gives rewards or compensation to units or individuals that provide potential exploration blocks to the authorities, with priority under equal conditions if they later participate in the competitive allocation of those exploration rights.

This is an important signal. China is incentivizing more geological targets to enter the system. The state is expanding what it knows, what it can classify and what it can eventually license, reserve or mobilize. The Regulation also provides that state funded exploration carried out for mineral resource security may proceed on the basis of a project assignment, without the need to obtain an exploration right. That creates two pathways for upstream discovery: market based exploration through mineral rights, and state mission exploration for national resource security.

From a mining perspective, this is one of the most relevant parts of the Regulation. China is treating geology as a layer of state capacity. Before a deposit can become a project, it must become visible to the system. Before it can be licensed, mined or reserved, it must be mapped, evaluated and classified. The Regulation therefore governs the conditions through which future mines become knowable, licensable, developable and reservable.

Strategic minerals are being treated as chain assets

The core category of the Regulation is strategic mineral resources. The Regulation directs the state to improve fiscal, financial, land, ecological, industrial and import export policy measures for strategic minerals. It also calls for a full chain coordination system covering exploration, supply, reserves and sales, with support for exploration, mining, processing, trade and reserves. This is the clearest expression of the systemic approach. Strategic minerals are treated as chain assets. Their importance is assessed through their role in the national economy, national security, domestic resource endowment, scarcity, external dependence and the resilience of related industrial and supply chains.

That gives the category flexibility. A mineral can become strategic because of its geological scarcity, its industrial role, its external dependency profile, its importance to advanced manufacturing, or its relevance to supply chain security. For certain strategic minerals determined by the State Council, the Regulation allows protective mining measures, including planning control, total volume control and restrictions on who may conduct mining. This is a security based approach to mineral governance. China is building a system where strategic minerals are identified, supported, controlled, reserved and protected across the chain.

From mineral rights to project control

The Regulation maintains competitive mechanisms for allocating mineral rights. In principle, mineral rights are to be allocated through bidding, auction or listing. At the same time, the Regulation creates strategic exceptions. For scarce strategic minerals with medium or larger reserves, or for areas with special technical or ecological requirements, exploration rights are preferably allocated through bidding. In urgent cases related to national mineral resource security, mining rights for strategic minerals may be directly granted with State Council approval.

This is a governed market. Competitive allocation exists, but it operates inside a strategic framework. The same logic appears in allocation authority. Strategic minerals, cross provincial mineral resources and resources located in China’s territorial sea or other jurisdictional waters are organized by the natural resources department of the State Council or by authorized provincial level authorities. Strategic mineral rights are therefore elevated into a national governance framework. The Regulation also defines duration. Exploration rights last five years and can generally be renewed up to three times, each time for five years. Mining rights are determined according to reserves and mine construction scale, with a maximum term of thirty years. Yet mineral rights may be recovered before expiry for public interest needs, including national mineral resource security, with fair and reasonable compensation.

This is where the Regulation becomes especially relevant for transactions. Mineral rights may be transferred, but not without limits. The Regulation restricts transfer in several cases, including where rights were obtained by agreement and held for less than five years, where the right is seized, where ownership is unclear or disputed, where the grant contract prohibits transfer, or where other state restrictions apply. Mining rights directly granted for resource security reasons cannot be transferred without approval from the original granting authority. If an equity transfer or similar transaction changes the actual controller of the mineral rights holder, the holder must report the change to the original mineral rights authority.

This moves due diligence beyond title review and into control review. For any company, financier, strategic buyer or transaction counterparty assessing a China-linked mineral asset, the question is not only whether the project holds a mining right. It is how that right was obtained, whether it is transferable, whether strategic restrictions apply, whether the transaction changes actual control, and whether the asset sits inside a broader mineral-security framework. Before exploration or mining operations begin, the rights holder must prepare an exploration plan or mining plan, submit it to the original mineral rights authority and obtain the relevant exploration license or mining license. Without the corresponding license, operations cannot proceed. The plan must address the mineral type, area, technical standards, work methods, green exploration requirements, mining method, mining sequence, resource utilization, green mine construction and space use arrangements.

If the main exploration method changes, the exploration plan must be adjusted and approved. If the mining method changes significantly, or if the principal mineral being mined changes, the mining plan must be adjusted and the mining license reissued. Feasibility studies and mine design must also be aligned with the approved mining plan. This is a practical due diligence issue. In mining terms, the Regulation confirms that a mineral right is only one layer of project viability. The relevant question is whether the right, license, plan, principal mineral, land use, restoration obligations, reserve reporting, technical design and actual operations are aligned. The fiscal layer also belongs here. Mineral rights holders must pay transfer income, occupation fees and other relevant charges. At the same time, the Regulation allows reductions or exemptions in cases such as low grade or difficult to process resources, significant comprehensive utilization of mineral resources, or emergency extraction organized under law. This is policy steering. Fees and incentives become instruments to direct exploration, support difficult resources, reward utilization and mobilize emergency production.

The mine as a territorial and physical system

The Regulation also treats mining as a territorial system. Before mineral rights are allocated, authorities must verify that the proposed exploration or mining area complies with territorial spatial planning controls. Geological surveys, exploration, mining, protection and ecological restoration must comply with mineral resource plans, and relevant information may be incorporated into territorial spatial planning supervision systems. This matters because a mine is never only a deposit. It is a physical system embedded in land, infrastructure, waste management, access, energy, water, processing, transport and closure. The Regulation recognizes that reality. Mining land includes not only the extraction area, but also land used for ore, waste rock, waste slag, industrial plants, underground works, tailings facilities, beneficiation plants, living facilities and transport infrastructure. Local governments must legally guarantee reasonable land needs for mineral exploration and mining.

The subsurface also begins to shape surface development. If a construction project must cover or sterilize strategic mineral resources, approval is required from the national natural resources authority or an authorized provincial level authority. That is a powerful signal. Strategic minerals are constraints and options inside national spatial planning. The underground resource base becomes part of how land, infrastructure and development are organized.

For open-pit mining of strategic minerals, the Regulation allows temporary land use when scientific demonstration shows that mining and reclamation can proceed at the same time. Each phase of temporary land use should, in principle, not exceed five years. New temporary land use will not be approved if the rights holder has failed to fulfill land reclamation and ecological restoration obligations. This is conditional mining. Strategic development is supported, but access to land is connected to restoration performance.

Green mining as resource security

The ecological provisions should be read as part of the same mineral security system. The Regulation requires the natural resources authority to improve green mine policies, standards and a dynamic green mine list. It also requires national standards for mining recovery rates, beneficiation recovery rates and comprehensive utilization rates. Mining rights holders must take technical, equipment and management measures to meet those standards.

This is important. Higher recovery rates and better comprehensive utilization expand the effective resource base. Waste reduction, efficiency and green mining are part of resource security. The Regulation also strengthens reserve reporting and resource accounting. Mining rights holders must report reserve changes and development utilization, and reserve reports must include spatial distribution, type, quantity, quality, industrial indicators, processing and beneficiation performance, mining technical conditions and development economics. That is a technical governance signal. China is linking resource knowledge, mine planning, processing reality and economic meaning inside the same reporting framework. Ecological restoration is treated with similar seriousness. The mining rights holder is responsible for ecological restoration. If a mining right is transferred, the buyer generally assumes the restoration obligation, unless otherwise provided by law or contract. If the seller falsifies ecological restoration information during the transfer, the seller’s obligation remains.

Before mining begins, the rights holder must prepare an ecological restoration plan together with the mining plan. The plan must include objectives, tasks, engineering layout, technical measures, timetable, budget and guarantee measures. If tailings facilities are involved, it must include special tailings restoration measures. Where possible, restoration must proceed during mining or by zones and phases. If that cannot be done, restoration must be completed before mine closure or within two years after closure, except for special cases such as radioactive minerals. Ecological restoration costs must be extracted annually and dedicated to restoration.

For valuation and project risk, this matters. Closure, tailings and restoration are part of the economics of the asset. They are also part of transfer risk, operating discipline and long term project viability. The same governance layer includes supervision and enforcement. The Regulation strengthens supervision across exploration, mining and ecological restoration, encourages joint inspections, non site inspections and non-contact technologies, and requires authorities to protect state secrets, work secrets, commercial secrets, personal privacy and personal information. It expressly recognizes that commercial secrets may include reserves, exploration results, major discoveries and core technical solutions. This reflects a practical tension in strategic mining governance. The state wants more visibility into the mineral system. Companies need protection for commercially sensitive geological and technical information. The Regulation attempts to hold both together, but within a system clearly oriented toward state supervision and information integration. The revised Mineral Resources Law also adds a judicial layer. Where violations damage mineral resources, pollute the environment, harm ecosystems, or damage national or public interests, the People’s Procuratorate, legally authorized bodies and relevant organizations may bring lawsuits before the courts. That point matters because mineral governance is not only administrative. It also enters the legal architecture of public interest protection.

Strategic reserves, emergency capacity and external defense

The most strategic part of the Regulation is the reserve and emergency framework. China establishes a strategic mineral reserve system combining product reserves, production capacity reserves and origin site reserves. The system is government led, socially co-built, diversified and coordinated. Its functions include strategic guarantee, macro control and response to urgent needs. This is central to the Geopolitical Mining reading. China is organizing optionality.

Product reserves refer to physical mineral inventories. Production capacity reserves refer to the ability to increase output when needed. Origin site reserves refer to deposits or mineral areas preserved as strategic supply options. Together, these three layers create a mineral security architecture. They allow the state to manage current production, future supply, emergency capacity and strategic redundancy.

Origin site reserves are especially relevant. The Regulation directs the state to determine reserve minerals, scale and layout, conduct investigations and evaluations, define strategic mineral reserve areas and strengthen monitoring and protection. Strategic minerals included in origin site reserves may not be mined or covered by other projects without approval from the national natural resources authority. The reserve period should be linked to mineral resource planning and, in principle, should not be less than five years. This changes the meaning of a deposit. A mineral deposit is valuable as production, and it can also be valuable as a strategic option preserved for future use.

The emergency provisions move minerals closer to the logic of energy security, food security and national preparedness. Relevant departments must share data and monitor mineral supply and demand, price fluctuations and safety risks. In emergency situations, necessary measures may include directly organizing mineral extraction, processing, transportation and supply; requisitioning mineral products, reserve facilities and transport tools; and organizing supply according to priority guarantee sequences. This is mineral mobilization. In a crisis, strategic minerals can enter a system of command, prioritization, requisition and emergency supply.

The external dimension reinforces the same logic. Foreign investment in mineral exploration and mining must comply with China’s foreign investment negative list. The 2024 negative list prohibits foreign investment in the exploration, mining and beneficiation of rare earths, radioactive materials and tungsten. The Regulation also states that foreign investment in mineral exploration and mining that affects or may affect national security is subject to security review. Imports and exports of mineral resources and related goods, technologies and services must comply with China’s foreign trade, import-export and export control rules. Article 76 is the most geopolitical clause. If any country, region or international organization adopts, assists or supports discriminatory prohibitions, restrictions or similar measures that endanger China’s mineral resources or related industrial and supply chain security, relevant State Council departments may take necessary countermeasures. The Regulation also reaches outward. Overseas mineral resource development should safeguard China’s national and public interests, comply with Chinese law and host country law, honor contracts, respect local customs and cultural traditions, protect the ecological environment, strengthen safety and risk prevention, complete required procedures and accept supervision by relevant Chinese authorities and diplomatic missions abroad.

China’s mineral system therefore extends beyond domestic mining. It includes foreign investment, export controls, countermeasures and overseas mineral development as part of supply chain security. Existing licenses are also addressed. Exploration and mining licenses legally issued before July 1, 2025 remain valid during their effective period. At the same time, several older administrative rules are repealed when the new Regulation enters into force on June 15, 2026. For due diligence, the date matters. The question is when the license was issued, under which regime, how it will be renewed, whether the mineral is strategic, whether transfer restrictions apply, whether restoration obligations are properly funded and whether the asset is exposed to reserve or emergency provisions.

Conclusion: the full architecture of material power

China’s new Implementation Regulation of the Mineral Resources Law confirms a strategic shift in mineral governance. Beijing is strengthening the state’s ability to discover what it does not yet know, classify what matters, protect what is strategic, license what can be developed, reserve what should be preserved, mobilize what may be needed in crisis and respond to external pressure on mineral and industrial supply chains. The Regulation is both defensive and expansionary. It protects existing mineral security, and it expands the upstream knowledge base through geological surveys, prospecting incentives and strategic exploration. It regulates mines, and it also governs the conditions through which future mines become part of the national resource system.

In the 15th Five Year Plan, China signaled the priority: strengthen strategic mineral exploration, development and reserves, deepen the new round of prospecting breakthroughs and improve emergency supply capacity. In the Regulation, China builds the mechanism. For mining companies, investors and governments, the implication is clear: China’s mineral policy cannot be understood mine by mine. It has to be understood as a system. The mine is one node. The object of governance is the full architecture of material power.

Resources

• State Council of the People’s Republic of China. (2026). Implementation Regulation of the Mineral Resources Law of the People’s Republic of China — State Council Order No. 839.
• Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the People’s Republic of China. (2024). Mineral Resources Law of the People’s Republic of China.
• Xinhua News Agency. (2026). Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China.
• Xinhua News Agency. (2026). Authorized release: Implementation Regulation of the Mineral Resources Law of the People’s Republic of China.
• Geopolitical Mining. (2026). China’s 15th Five-Year Plan 2026–2030: Real Economy, Strategic Resources and the Next Development Stage.