Nickel as a strategic mineral officially designated by China plays an important role in ensuring national resource security, national defense security, and economic security, and meeting the need of China's strategic emerging industry development. This article summarizes the geological exploration investment, geological exploration progress, reserve changes, and development and utilization of nickel mines in China in the past decade. It outlines the current domestic nickel industry structure and production process, summarizes the domestic consumption structure and international import and export trade of nickel. By analyzing China's demand for nickel, it concludes that China is a nickel poor country yet a major consumer of nickel. Currently, stainless steel accounts for 67.5% of the China's nickel consumption structure, traditional demand areas remain stable. China's external dependence on nickel resources has long been above 80%, with the main import sources being the Philippines and Indonesia. From a domestic perspective, the current investment and physical workload of nickel ore exploration have decreased by over 75% compared to 2010. The mining industry has achieved a production rate of 50.2%, and there is still great potential for improvement in the exploration, storage, and mining of nickel deposits in China. In the near future, the field of new energy vehicle batteries will drive an explosive growth of emerging nickel demand. Suggestions are put forward to expand the sources of nickel ore imports, reduce concentration, strengthen the unified coordination of Chinese enterprises overseas, ensure the healthy and sustainable development of the overall industry chain, and formulate and improve the recycling and utilization standard system to further balance the supply and demand of national nickel resources and avoid risks.

China  /  nickel ore  /  supply and demand situation