The “Draft Amendment to the Mineral Resources Law of the People’s Republic of China” (hereinafter referred to as the “New Mineral Resources Law”) was reviewed and adopted at the 12th Session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress on November 8 and will take effect from July 1, 2025. This is the first major revision of the Mineral Resources Law since its promulgation and implementation in 1986, and it holds significant importance for safeguarding national mineral resource security and promoting high-quality development of the mining industry. Among other provisions, the law stipulates that the transfer of mining rights will be fully promoted through competitive bidding procedures.

　　Wei Lihua, Director of the Department of Regulations at the Ministry of Natural Resources, explained that mineral resources are the “food” and “blood” of industry and serve as a crucial material foundation for economic and social development. Ensuring the security of the nation’s mineral resource supply is a major issue that must be addressed in the process of building Chinese-style modernization. Therefore, the new Mineral Resources Law places safeguarding national mineral resource security at the top priority and has legally established a comprehensive and systematic framework for ensuring the security of mineral resources.

　　The new Mineral Resources Law stipulates the establishment of a special protection system for strategic mineral resources. It includes in the catalog of strategic mineral resources those minerals that are critical to national economic security, national defense security, and the development needs of strategic emerging industries. For certain specially designated strategic minerals, protective mining practices will be implemented. In principle, strategic mineral resources may not be overlaid or covered by other developments. If mining these strategic minerals necessitates the use of collectively owned land belonging to farmers, such land may be expropriated in accordance with the law. Meanwhile, a new chapter titled “Mineral Resource Reserves and Emergency Response” has been added as the fifth chapter, explicitly defining the legal status of mineral resource reserves for the first time under the law and establishing a strategic mineral resource reserve system that integrates product reserves, production capacity reserves, and origin-based reserves.

　　Wei Lihua emphasized that the 1996 Mineral Resources Law, which adopted an application-and-approval system for prospecting rights and mining rights, can no longer adequately meet the needs of allocating mineral rights under market economic conditions. In 2017, China launched a pilot program in six provinces (and autonomous regions) including Shanxi, Fujian, and Jiangxi, mandating that the primary method for granting mineral rights should be through bidding, auction, and public listing, and comprehensively promoting competitive allocation of mineral rights. The pilot program has achieved remarkable results. Therefore, the new Mineral Resources Law elevates the practice of competitive allocation of mineral rights through bidding, auction, and public listing—proven effective over many years—to the level of law. Article 17 explicitly stipulates that mineral rights shall be granted through competitive methods such as bidding, auction, and public listing. This represents a significant institutional innovation and a fundamental transformation in both the management and utilization of mineral resources, and it is of great importance for enhancing the level of development, utilization, and protection of mineral resources.

　　Moreover, the 1996 Mineral Resources Law contained only a few provisions addressing ecological protection in mining areas, and most of these provisions were merely declaratory and lacked strong operational effectiveness. To achieve the legislative goal of “strengthening the protection of mineral resources and the ecological environment,” the new Mineral Resources Law has specifically added a new chapter—Chapter Four—entitled “Ecological Restoration of Mining Areas,” which provides clear and specific regulations on ecological restoration in mining regions.