Shen’s different view of the world


Richard Roberts

Top image :
Zijin Mining vice president Shaoyang Shen speaks at the Future Minerals Forum 2025 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
‘Today an industrialised China has shifted fundamentally in its growth model’

China was the proverbial “elephant in the room”, Future Minerals Forum 2025 audiences heard a few times. But there was Zijin Mining vice president Shaoyang Shen standing at the front of the room on day three.

Not surprisingly he brought a slightly different perspective to matters framing how the industry at large sees the year ahead.

For example, heavyweight global miner Zijin isn’t necessarily seeing the same clear-cut demand signals for many key minerals being talked about by Western peers, according to Shen. Or it at least has red asterisks next to the forecasts of most of the world’s commodity research club.

“In recent years there have been a lot of talks about concerns of supply of minerals, particularly by politicians in a lot of capital cities,” Shen said.

“But what is fascinating are substantially less talks about risk [on the] demand side.

“China has been a key driver of growth for the global mining industry for the past two decades with the country consuming up to 40-50% of major industrial [materials] in the past decade.

“But demand from China can no longer be taken as granted.

“Today an industrialised China has shifted fundamentally in its growth model. Chinese demand for industrial commodities is experiencing much slower growth.

“With Chinese commodity demand slowing down it is logical to predict that demand for industrial materials including various types of minerals will also be coming down.”

This is what some mining analysts might call a “worst case” scenario.

A world away, in another conference session, there was talk about the threat of “mineral depletion” from an AI boom multiplied by an energy transition boom.

Steele Li, vice chairman and chief investment officer with China’s CMOC, has said previously the world’s energy transition, assuming it moved at any sort of speed, could reignite the country’s economic growth near-term given its dominant place in electric mobility, renewable energy and most other supply chains. He said in Ryadh China “just needs another driver for the economy”.

While Gracelin Baskaran from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies translated missing Chinese demand as trouble for president Xi Jinping, Shen suggested it would be particularly unhelpful for the (still Western dominated) global mining industry which continued to face an uphill battle to develop major new mines and replace low-cost reserves.

Adding to uncertainties paralysing investment in the industry were bothersome election and policy adjustment cycles.

“As we are aware in the coming month there are a number of new governments coming to power, including those in European and North American countries. This has added another layer of uncertainty … in terms of trade and investment policies these new governments might bring with them,” Shen said.

“Amid increasing geopolitical and economic uncertainties miners are more cautious about exploration investment, leading to a marked decline in discoveries with … high-quality deposits becoming increasingly rare. The industry faces inadequate resource replacement.

“Producing mines are under pressure from declining grades while virtually all aspects of operating costs have gone up. Development of new projects has also become more challenging with capex per unit of metal output rising significantly.”

All these issues pointed to signs the industry may be “losing growth momentum”.

Though maybe not all would be lost.

“Even though we are currently facing some challenges, there are also encouraging opportunities,” Shen said.

New technologies were shifting mineral demand, growing it in some cases, while the “new energy transition era” presented many opportunities in copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, zinc and silver.

Shen said while global economic uncertainty was a major challenge for miners, more worrying was “the recent trend of anti-globalisation, increased protectionism and imposing of higher tariff and more restrictive trade policies by many economies”.

He rightly pointed out international cooperation was a “key topic that has got the most talk during this forum”.

“International cooperation is critically important for the mining industry,” he said.

“We all know mineral resources worldwide are distributed unevenly. On one hand, developed countries and China do not mine much of the minerals but consume most of them. On the other hand many resource-rich countries need capital investment [and] mining and industrial technology, and operational expertise from more advanced economies.

“We believe it should be the market that determines allocation of these economic resources.

“It is important for low-cost growth for industry in the long run. As well as for the path of the world economy.

“It is our view, and I think most of our peers in the industry would agree, that market-based cross-border transactions with no political interference have benefited all parties and contributed to better allocation of resources, and funding more project development.

“We believe international cooperation serves the best interests of all stakeholders … and should be allowed to continue functioning as it has been.”

 

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