.This Spring Festival, it is not only Mu Haoyang who has had extraordinary life, but also a group of geological prospectors working in the snow and ice.

Ding Zhaomin is one of these people and the leader of this geological exploration team.

Six years ago, Ding Zhaomin was an engineer at the Institute of Geology. In 2015, because he had not been named a senior engineer for three consecutive years, Ding Zhaomin jumped out of the research institute where others wanted to get into the point of their heads, and joined the "Longsheng Group" after the expiration of his two-year professional contract.

As the largest private resource exploration and mining group in China, "Longsheng" is one of the industries under Sheng Shiping's name and the earliest private mineral resource development company to enter North Korea. Before 2017, Longsheng's business in North Korea had been mainly mined iron ore. By 2018, Longsheng became North Korea's largest iron ore miner and became the main supplier of domestic steel companies.

Doing a big business does not mean making a lot of money.

Because Shengshiping has several private steel mills under its name, and before 2017, it cooperated with the military to become the main steel suppliers of the Navy and the Army. For example, more than 70% of the steel used in domestic aircraft carriers is provided by the steel mills under Shengshiping's name. Therefore, in the iron ore market, Longsheng is just a chess piece in Shengshiping's hand, which is mainly used to fight price wars with the three major iron ore groups.

This is not only a corporate strategy, but also a national strategy.

For example, in 2016, after Longsheng's iron ore mining farm was officially put into production in North Korea, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Vale took the initiative to negotiate with Chinese steel companies, hoping to sign an annual procurement agreement in advance. Chinese steel companies rely on the guarantees made by Sheng Shiping, not only did not sign the annual agreement, but also clearly required the real-time market price to be based on the real-time market price. As a result, the three major iron ore groups made more than 100 million less in China that year. In the following years, the price of iron ore continued to decline, and by 2019, the average purchase price was only US$178 per ton. If inflation after 2014 was deducted, it basically fell to the production cost price of iron ore.

Interestingly, Longsheng's share in the domestic iron ore market is not high.

By 2019, it was only about 11%, far lower than the three major iron ore groups.

However, after Longsheng joined the competition, the three major iron ore groups lost their market dominance. First, the market has formed a pattern of oversupply, and second, no one dares to underestimate Longsheng's supply capacity. In the outside world, Longsheng is the trump card in the hands of Chinese steel companies.

The reason is very simple: Longsheng has always pursued a business strategy where investment exceeds output.

In 2017, Longsheng's annual mining volume was only one-tenth of the actual mining capacity, and it has been maintained at this level and adjusted according to market price fluctuations. In this way, the mines run by Longsheng have become China's "strategic reserve".

That's why Longsheng was in a loss until 2019.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, because Longsheng is only part of the huge industrial group. Longsheng's losses have made Shengshiping make a big profit in other fields.

In 2019, Shengshiping's mineral resources group operated by more than Vale.

More importantly, in four years, Shengshiping has successively acquired stocks of the three major iron ore groups. By the end of 2019, he held 11% of Rio Tinto, 14% of BHP Billiton and 7% of Vale, becoming a member of the board of directors of the three major iron ore groups.

As long as the price of iron ore cannot rise, Sheng Shiping will be able to acquire one of them in five years.

Of course, Longsheng's losses will definitely not last.

Since 2018, Longsheng's investment in the iron ore field has begun to decrease, and it has begun to expand into the fields of coal, oil, electrolytic aluminum and rare metals.

Ding Zhaomin came to Longsheng at this time and was engaged in the exploration of rare metals.

In name, Longsheng mainly mines rare earth mines in North Korea, and after processing and smelting, the finished products are sold to the domestic market to rectify the chaotic situation in the domestic rare metal market. In a strategic sense, it is mainly to help the government introduce relevant policies to rectify domestic rare earth mining companies and prevent the outflow of strategic resources.

You should know that China itself is the world's largest exporter of rare earths and rare metals.

As a strategic resource, rare earth ores and rare metals have very important military uses, and almost all electronic products are related to rare earths.

Western countries have always been buying rare earths from China. To put it bluntly, in the Second Korean War and the East China Sea War, most of the rare metals in electronic equipment used by the US-South Korea Allied Forces and Japan were purchased from China.

For countries without rare earth resources, China's rare earths are even more precious.

Take Japan for example. Major Japanese companies have long set an unwritten rule that no matter when, the rare earth resources they reserve must meet the normal consumption of more than 20 years. Before 2010, Japan purchased rare earth ores and rare metals from China that far exceeded industrial demand every year. Most of them were stored as strategic reserves, and only a small part was used for industrial production.

As early as 2010, China wanted to integrate the rare earth industry.

But the efforts have not achieved much results and have also caused a lot of trouble. For example, the United States and other Western countries filed lawsuits at the WTO on the grounds that governments interfere in the market.

The reason for this situation is very simple: China's rare earth mining is too chaotic and difficult to manage in a centralized manner.

You should know that the United States is the world's second largest rare earth reserve country, with reserves second only to China, but it became a rare earth importer after the 1960s. The United States was able to seal its own rare earths and use other people's first, mainly because the rare earth mines were concentrated in the hands of several large enterprises. These enterprises closed their main mines on the grounds of market operations, but the US government did not have to bear responsibility for this.

For China, if it wants to close the mines, either the government will come forward or integrate the rare earth mining industry.

The former certainly won't work because it violates the rules of the WTO.

By adopting the latter approach, state-owned enterprises must also be avoided, because this is also considered to be government intervention.

Longsheng played a crucial role in protecting rare earth resources. Within two years, Longsheng acquired one-third of domestic rare earth mining enterprises and sealed dozens of mines. Including other private resource mining enterprises that cooperate closely with the government, by the end of 2019, two-thirds of domestic rare earth mines had been sealed.

The supply has decreased, and the market price of rare earth resources has risen rapidly.

By the end of 2019, the prices of rare earth ores and rare metals were twenty-seven times that of 2014, and are still rising, and are expected to peak around 2025.

More importantly, China sealed rare earth mines, forcing the United States to start mining rare earth resources.

Among the buyers of "US" rare earth ore and rare metals, there must be Chinese companies.

Of course, these are major strategies of the government and enterprises, and they are also major strategies in the resource field, and have nothing to do with grassroots workers like Ding Zhaomin.

After working in North Korea for a year, Ding Zhaomin received an extremely unique task.

Because before that, he worked in the Institute of Geology for eleven years, he became an ideal candidate for secret cooperation with the military.

This task is to find gold in North Korea.

Compared with rare metals, gold has more strategic value.

In the industrial field, gold is very widely used. Not to mention, the electronics industry consumes about 1,500 tons of gold every year.

Of course, the main value of gold is still in the financial field.

In 2014, China's strategic gold reserves were only 1,400 tons, and 800 tons of them were still stored in the Federal Reserve's underground vault.

Although China has increased its gold reserves year by year since 2015, it mainly relies on domestic mining and its growth rate is very slow.

By the end of 2019, less than 1,600 tons of strategic gold stored in China were stored.

Compared with the huge economic scale, gold reserves are significantly lower. You should know that the United States' strategic gold reserves exceeded 10,000 tons in 2019, France has more than 4,000 tons, and even Japan has nearly 2,000 tons. If the economic scale is the basis, China's gold reserves should reach at least 3,500 tons.

In this way, not only do we need to increase the efforts to exploit domestic resources, but we also need to find solutions abroad.

As early as 2015, after Longsheng Group discovered the world's largest iron ore in North Korea, several geologists predicted that North Korea must have amazing gold reserves.

The key is, where is this gold mountain?

Over the past year, the geological exploration team led by Ding Zhaomin traveled all over the mountains and rivers of North Korea, and only sent back to China for in-depth research were dozens of tons of samples.

The effort is not without rewards, but it is just far from meeting expectations.

At the beginning of the year, Ding Zhaomin discovered a gold mine near Baishan in South Ping'an Road. The reserves were estimated at about 250 tons, and the maximum reserves were predicted to be 500 tons.

This discovery allowed Ding Zhaomin and other exploration workers to receive an extremely generous bonus.

With this money, Ding Zhaomin not only bought a new house, but also allowed his daughter to enter the best high school in Xi'an.

However, this discovery is far from solving the problem.

Subsequently, Ding Zhaomin found two more gold mines, but the reserves were not large. Including the discovery at the beginning of the year, the reserves of the three mines were less than 600 tons, and the predicted reserves were only about 1,000 tons.

However, these discoveries strengthened the geologists' judgment that North Korea must have an undiscovered gold mountain.

In order to encourage geological explorers like Ding Zhaomin, Longsheng Group has formulated a very attractive bonus system. If a gold mine with a reserve of more than 1,000 tons can be found, Ding Zhaomin, as the captain of the exploration team, can receive a bonus of 5 million yuan at one time, and there will be an additional bonus of 1 million yuan every year during the gold mining period. Even for others, the generous bonus is extremely tempting.

There is motivation when there is reward. When all Chinese people are reuniting at home, dozens of geological prospectors who are called "Golden Dogs" are still busy outside.

Work hard will always pay off.
Chapter completed!