Vice Premier Li Keqiang called for greater efforts to find and establish new mines in order to propel sustainable economic growth while visiting a land resource survey exhibition, which is being held in Beijing.
Li called for more efforts in geological prospecting in order to fuel the country's economic development and relieve a shortage of resources, which can create a bottleneck for economic growth.
Li said China should give priority to searching for domestic resource deposits and take stock of its energy and resource deposits.
Li said there is still great potential for discovering new mines, as prospecting currently being conducted at a relatively slow pace.
Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, also attended the exhibition.
Zhou said that land resource surveys are crucial to relieving China's resource shortage and can serve the country's macro-economic regulations and socio-economic development.
Zhou said greater attention should be given to the early warning and prevention of geological disasters such as sinkholes, which may develop due to overzealous exploration of underground water supplies.
Zhou also said that the protection of arable land must be preserved during the process of geological prospecting in order to ensure food security.
The exhibition, jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Land and Resources, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance, features achievements made in nationwide land resource surveys over the past 12 years.
According to an official notice issued on Friday, the surveys have involved a total investment of over 300 billion yuan (46.5 billion U.S. dollars) and employed hundreds of thousands of scientists and other staff since 1998.
The notice said that there have been breakthroughs in geological prospecting in China, as more than 900 new mines have been discovered.