By Capper and Redfearn

 China has a large selection of resources including coal, iron ore, petroleum, natural gas, mercury, tin, lead, zinc, uranium and aluminium, manganese, vanadium, molybdenum and tungsten.  China also has the world’s largest hydro- power potential, with reserves of 680 million kw.

 Between 1949 and the late 1970s, China was a centrally planned economy, and almost all operations were SOEs.  These were in heavy industries in things like natural resources, and the 1980s witnessed a focused increase in productivity and forced the SOEs to reform previous policy

 SOEs have attracted large amounts of MNCs from western countries and with them comes FDI.  FDI in China increased from 3.5US$ billion in 1990, to 93.7US$ billion in  This means the businesses have managed to increase productivity as much of this money has been invested in technology.  SEZ have had an influence as well

 Extracting these resources is far from sustainable, as it is believed extracting things like aluminium uses as much electricity as a town of 10,000 would in a day.  One of the main reasons for China’s vast economic growth is because in the short run, it is having a boom period of having large quantity of output. However in the long run, they will run out of these resources.  Secondly, China is starting to experience the negatives of inflation, as the cost of rising commodity prices has seen cost push inflation rise, resulting in the economy currently having its lowest growth period in the past five years ( around 7%)

 The geographical distribution of natural resources is not even. Eg with coal, more than 70% is concentrated in Shanxi and inner Mongolia, whereas only 1.4% is found in nine provinces in southern China.  This means that despite the fact many rural areas have benefited, there are some that don’t, due to not possessing resources, and it is these rural areas that are highest in poverty and migration figures.

 China produces 17 million tons of salt annually, one third of the world’s total. ( rising market)  China has a rich marine industry, with over 2500 marine animals, and 50 having extremely high economic value. Also more than 20 minerals have been found in its waters including natural gas, copper and phosphorite.

 China has rich land resources as farmland covers 122,400 sq km, 10% of its total land area, and is distributed mainly in plain areas in the north of China, and also is common in the south in sites like Yangtze and Pearl River Delta.  Agriculutre is highly developed in these areas which are the major producer of wheat, corn, rice and are branded as “ cash crops”