China has made some major gold discoveries in recent months, and among the biggest has been a "superlarge" deposit found in central China with estimated reserves of over 1,000 tons of gold worth $85.9 billion.
Geologists detected 40 gold veins, with a reserve of 300 tons of gold, within a depth of around 6,562 feet buried beneath the Wangu gold field in Pingjiang County of the Hunan province, the Geological Bureau of Hunan Province have reported, according to Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency.
Described as a "superlarge gold deposit," the site's gold reserve within a depth of about 9,842 feet was approximated to be at over 1,000 tons, which is valued to be around 600 billion yuan, the bureau noted.
"Many drilled rock cores showed visible gold," Chen Rulin, an ore-prospecting expert at the bureau, said in a statement, noting that a ton of ore in the 2,000-meter (around 6,562 feet) range contained a maximum of 138 grams of gold.
The "buried treasure" found in the depths of the Hunan province ranks among the largest gold deposits ever documented and could rival South Africa's long-running South Deep mine, according to ECO News.
Last month China saw another breakthrough, uncovering what officials believe is Asia's largest undersea gold deposit.
The discovery was made off the coast of Laizhou in Yantai on the Jiaodong Peninsula of the Shandong province in eastern China. While the size of the deposit has not been disclosed, authorities believe the latest finding has increased Laizhou's gold reserves to over 3,900 tons, which fo rms roughly around 26 percent of China's known gold resources, according to the South China Morning Post.
In November last year, officials announced the discovery of more than 1,400 tons of gold in the Liaoning province of northeastern China. With confirmed reserves of 1,444.49 tons, the discovery was reported to be China's largest single find since the country's founding in 1949, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources.
In the same month, authorities also found a gold deposit with estimated reserves of over 1,000 tons in the Kunlun Mountains near the western border of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
Back in November 2023, officials in Shandong province said it had identified about a quarter of China's gold reserves, including over 3,500 tonnes on the Jiaodong Peninsula, which is reported to be the world's third-largest go ld mining belt.
Around 216,265 tons of gold have been mined throughout history, and around two-thirds of this gold has been extracted since 1950, according to the World Gold Council.
In the United States, in 2024, domestic gold mine production was estimated to be 160 tons, with its value estimated to be $12 billion, marking a 9 percent increase from the value in 2023, according to a January report from the U.S. Geological Survey.
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