Behind the soaring stock price of Zijin Mining, the "King of Gold": Gold as the spear, lithium ore as the shield.

Author: Kanjian Finance

The arrival of a new cycle in non-ferrous metals has made the gold sector the biggest winner.

As the company with the largest market capitalization in the A-share gold sector, Zijin Mining has become one of the ultimate winners.

On January 6, Zijin Mining ushered in a "historic moment," with its stock price surging by over 6%, briefly pushing its market capitalization past the 1 trillion yuan mark. Throughout 2025, Zijin Mining's performance in the capital market was also outstanding, with its stock price rising by 135.77% and its total market capitalization increasing by 525.8 billion yuan.

Looking at the longer term, this marks the sixth consecutive year that Zijin Mining's stock price has risen. At the beginning of 2020, Zijin Mining's stock price was only 3.15 yuan per share, and now it has increased more than 10 times.

The soaring stock price of Zijin Mining is naturally driven by the continuously rising prices of precious metals such as gold, silver, and copper, especially gold . According to media reports, precious metals experienced a historic bull market in 2025, with London spot gold rising by over 60% cumulatively, hitting 50 new historical highs throughout the year – its strongest performance in nearly forty years. Gold mining is Zijin Mining's largest revenue-generating business. Driven by the continued rise in gold prices, Zijin Mining is expected to achieve a net profit of 51 billion to 52 billion yuan in 2025, averaging nearly 140 million yuan per day.

Besides the rise in precious metal prices, the key reason why Zijin Mining's stock price has risen for six consecutive years is its long-term strategic layout around the two major resources of gold and copper.

According to Frost & Sullivan, from 2019 to 2024, Zijin Mining's average acquisition cost for mines was approximately US$61.3 per ounce, while the industry average acquisition cost during the same period was approximately US$92.9 per ounce, 52% higher than Zijin Mining's. The low-cost advantage brought by its accurate global bottom-fishing gives Zijin Mining ample confidence to cope with cyclical fluctuations.

In the past two years, Zijin Mining has focused its attention on lithium resources . At the beginning of last year, Zijin Mining spent 13.7 billion yuan to acquire approximately 25% of the equity of Zangge Mining and gain control, bringing multiple lithium salt lake resources in Tibet and Qinghai into its system. Through this move, the company's lithium resource reserves have increased significantly, and the lithium resource equivalent it currently controls has reached 17.88 million tons of lithium carbonate, ranking among the top ten in the world in terms of equivalent reserves.

Clearly, Zijin Mining's goal is not simply to become a gold giant, and breaking the trillion-yuan market value mark is by no means the "end point" for Zijin Mining.

Looking back, Zijin Mining's current success is inseparable from a mountain and a person.

This mountain is Zijin Mountain, which was once deemed by experts to be "not worth mining"; and this person is Chen Jinghe, who gave up his job in the provincial capital and volunteered to develop Zijin Mountain in the county.

According to the data, Chen Jinghe was among the first batch of college students after the resumption of the college entrance examination. After graduating from the geology major of Fuzhou University in 1982, he was assigned to the Minxi Geological Team. He led his team to conduct exploration in Zijin Mountain for a full 10 years, but the final exploration results were disappointing: the gold reserves in Zijin Mountain were only 5.43 tons, and each ton of ore contained only 1 gram of gold.

Due to its low gold content, the provincial government delegated the mining rights of this "poor mine" to Shanghang County. Unwilling to let the exploration results go to waste, Chen Jinghe gave up his position as a section-level cadre in the provincial geological exploration department and became the general manager of the Shanghang County Mineral Resources Company, participating in the mining of the Zijinshan Gold Mine, which became the predecessor of Zijin Mining. When no one was optimistic about its prospects, Chen Jinghe boldly adopted the heap leaching technology, which was not favored in the industry, drastically reducing the investment for a 50,000-ton-per-year gold mine from 29 million yuan to 7 million yuan, and transforming a large amount of waste ore into mineable gold deposits.

Driven by technological innovation, Zijin Mountain has been transformed from a "waste mountain" into China's largest gold mine , with proven gold reserves exceeding 300 tons and a potential value of over 10 billion yuan.

In 2001, Shanghang Mining Company was officially renamed Zijin Mining . By this time, Zijin Mining had already taken shape, but Chen Jinghe was not satisfied. He realized that if they remained confined to Zijin Mountain, the mineral resources would eventually be depleted. With the national initiatives of "Western Development" and "Revitalizing the Old Industrial Bases of Northeast China," Zijin Mining embarked on a nationwide expansion path. In 2002, Zijin Mining acquired the Guizhou Shuiyindong Gold Mine at a low price , taking its first step towards nationwide development.

Subsequently, Zijin Mining seized the opportunity and successively acquired mines such as the Ashele copper-zinc mine in Xinjiang, the Hunchun gold-copper mine in Jilin, and the Xiyulong copper mine . In 2003 and 2008, Zijin Mining was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (H-shares) and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (A-shares) respectively. By 2013, Zijin Mining had become one of the companies in China that controlled the most metal mineral resources.

Although Zijin Mining was already quite successful at this point, it was just the beginning for this trillion-dollar giant. Its real breakthrough came in 2015. At that time, the global mining industry was facing a downturn, with Vale suffering a huge loss of $12.1 billion and Glencore losing $4.964 billion. During this industry slump, Chen Jinghe chose to go against the grain and boldly promoted a "counter-cyclical M&A" strategy. He successively acquired several projects from around the world, including Phoenix Gold Australia, Norton Gold Fields, Musonoi Mining in Congo, and Barrick (New Guinea).

In 2019, Zijin Mining set its sights on the Buritica gold mine in Colombia , one of the world's highest-grade gold mines, operated by Continental Gold. Zijin Mining eventually acquired 100% of Continental Gold's equity at the end of 2019 for C$1.33 billion.

One acquisition after another has enabled Zijin Mining to rapidly expand its size.

By the end of 2022, the company's proven, controlled and inferred resources were 73.72 million tons of copper, 3,117 tons of gold, 11.18 million tons of zinc (lead), 14,612 tons of silver, and 12.15 million tons of lithium resources (equivalent to lithium carbonate) . It is precisely because of these acquisitions that Zijin Mining was able to reap huge benefits from the precious metals bull market in 2025.

In addition to traditional gold and copper, Zijin Mining has also set its sights on lithium resources.

Lithium is known as the "white oil" for mankind's future. In the past two years, the explosive growth of new energy vehicles and energy storage has led to a surge in demand for upstream metal resources such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt.

As a non-ferrous metals giant, Zijin Mining naturally saw the huge opportunities behind lithium resources. In 2021, Chen Jinghe proposed the goal of "striving to become an important enterprise in the global lithium industry." However, Chen Jinghe and Zijin Mining did not rush to enter the market. Instead, they followed the previous strategy of counter-cyclical investment, acquiring a large number of lithium mines during the industry downturn.

Zijin Mining's first lithium mining investment was in 2021. In October of that year, Zijin Mining acquired Neo Lithium, a Canadian company, for approximately RMB 4.939 billion. Neo Lithium's core asset is the 3Q Salt Lake project in Argentina, which boasts high grade and low impurities. This acquisition marked Zijin Mining's formal entry into the new energy mining sector and its first step in building a global lithium resource portfolio.

2022 was a pivotal year for Zijin Mining's domestic lithium resource expansion. In April of that year, Zijin Mining spent a whopping 7.682 billion yuan to acquire a 70% stake in the Laguocuo Salt Lake lithium mine in Tibet. Two months later, Zijin Mining acquired a 71.14% stake in Hunan Houdao Mining for 1.8 billion yuan, successfully securing 100% mining rights to the Xiangyuan lithium polymetallic mine. With this, Zijin Mining established a core portfolio of "two lakes and one mine," centered on the 3Q Salt Lake in Argentina, the Laguocuo Salt Lake in Tibet, and the Xiangyuan lithium mine in Hunan. The three assets possess equivalent lithium carbonate of 7.63 million tons, 2.14 million tons, and 2.16 million tons respectively, totaling over 10 million tons.

In 2023, due to oversupply, lithium carbonate prices plummeted, exacerbating investment risks in the mining industry. While Zijin Mining slowed its acquisition pace, it continued to increase investment in high-quality lithium mines. In July of that year, Zijin Mining acquired a 20% stake in Shenghe Lithium through a capital increase in Tianqi Lithium, gaining a minority interest in the Yajiang Cuola lithium mine, a core lithium mine in western Sichuan. In October, Zijin Mining obtained exploration rights for the Manono North section lithium mine approved by the Ministry of Mining of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Manono lithium mine ranks fourth globally among clay and hard rock lithium mines with a lithium carbonate equivalent of 16.4 million tons.

After a series of operations, Zijin Mining controls over 12.15 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent, ranking ninth globally and third domestically, behind only Tianqi Lithium and Ganfeng Lithium.

However, the story does not end there.

In early 2025, Zijin Mining made its largest single investment to date, acquiring approximately 24.82% of Zangge Mining's equity for RMB 13.729 billion , thus gaining control. It's important to note that this investment was not merely a simple financial one. Zijin Mining not only achieved absolute control of the Tibet Julong Copper Mine, a joint venture between the two companies, but also gained access to Zangge's potash fertilizer resources and lithium extraction capacity at the Qinghai Chaka Salt Lake, as well as its interests in several other salt lakes in Tibet, including Mami Co and Longmu Co., significantly enhancing its lithium reserves.

In summary, the surge in gold and copper prices in 2025 propelled Zijin Mining's total market capitalization past the trillion-yuan mark. Although there has been a slight pullback recently, Zijin Mining's upward cycle is not over. It's worth noting that the second growth curve of lithium resources also makes Zijin Mining's future very promising. Therefore, for Zijin Mining, reaching a trillion-yuan mark is not the end; the future remains bright.