The major gold concentration areas in China and their resource potentials

Abstract： Distributed nationwide for its special features, gold is one of the strategic mineral resources since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and great achievements have been made in the exploration and exploitation of gold; especially since the last decade, many changes have taken place in the pattern of gold resources in whole China. On the basis of the locations of large gold deposits, new discoveries of large and superlarge gold deposits have been made and there have also been important expansions in the main mining areas. Generally speaking, great potentials of gold resource exist in China. Gold deposits in China can be classified into the gold deposits related to granite-greenstone formation, gold deposits related to sedimentary formation (including the vein gold deposits of Carlin type and those related to metamorphosed clastic rocks), volcanic rock gold deposits (including the continental and marine types), intrusion-related gold deposits (including gold deposits of porphyry type and those related to the inner-intrusion and contact zone), fracture zone-altered rock gold deposits, placer gold deposits, gossan type gold deposits and soil type gold deposits. Exploration should be carried out at the depth and in search for new types. In this paper, the authors summarized the characteristics of gold ore resources and preliminarily divided gold deposits into 32 large ore concentration areas in the light of magma, tectonic settings, stratigraphy, fluids, metallogenic ages and other factors in China. Meanwhile, based on the most recent progress and data obtained in recent years, this paper describes the four most important ore concentration areas with an analysis of their resource potentials.