According to China Business News, the Chinese government has prepared to make a large-scale survey on China's mineral resources, among which are iron ore and copper ore. Foreign demand and price negotiations is a high priority for this survey.

The Ministry of Land and Resources has recently released a document stating that China has decided to assess the potentials of 25 kinds of mineral resources. This will give a 20 year hypothesis of proven reserves of the rare and important resources, their growth trends, and strategic layout of development bases.

Yan Tiexiong, a researcher from Consulting & Research Center under the Ministry said, "The purpose of this assessment is to make clear the actual strength of China's mineral resources, thereby facilitating further exploration, more importantly to break resource bottleneck and provide basis for decision-making concerning mineral resource strategy and medium and long-term planning of national economy."

As on-going negotiations for 2009 iron ore price between Chinese and overseas steel companies is debated, the assessment this time may have its potential meanings. According to the informed resource, although this assessment doesn't have a direct relationship with iron ore price negotiations; it can offer some certain references for the negotiations.

For more details, please read the full Chinese coverage at:

http://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/20090605/03266307441.shtml

(China.org.cn by Ma Yujia, June 5, 2009)