Abstract
Since the mid-1980s, double-digit gross domestic product (GDP) growth has driven the Chinese economy from an agrarian peasant base to the manufacturing center of the world, its economy now second in size only to the United States. This industrial expansion has, naturally, been accompanied by an explosion in resource consumption. China accounts for about one-fifth of the world’s population, yet consumes half of its cement, one-third of its steel, over a quarter of its aluminum, two-thirds of its iron ore, and more than 45 percent of its coal.1 In only the past 13 years, China has also swallowed up over four-fifths of the increase in the world’s copper supply.2 For most of the country’s fantastic growth, its own vast resources proved sufficient to support its industrial expansion. In the past decade, however, China has recognized the need to augment these supplies with foreign sources, and Chinese companies, normally state-owned enterprises (SOEs), have tapped into the vast reserves of the state and state-owned banks (SOBs) to secure access to mineral deposits abroad.
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Notes
J. Shankleman (2009) Going Global: Chinese Oil and Mining Companies and the Governance of Resource Wealth (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center), p. 20.
A. Wilson, F. McMahon and M. Cervantes (2013) Survey of Mining Companies 2012/2013 (Vancouver: Fraser Institute), p. 9.
C. Alden and M. Davies (2006) ‘A Profile of the Operations of Chinese Multinationals in Africa’, South African Journal of International Affairs, 13:1, 93.
See for instance: Breslin, ‘Access’; M. Cornish (2012) Behavior of Chinese SOEs: Implications for Investment and Cooperation in Canada (Canadian International Council and Canadian Council of Chief Executives);
D. Brautigam (2009) The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 281; M. Mattlin, ‘Chinese Strategic State-Owned Enterprises’;
Peterson Institute for International Economics (2012) Chinese Investment in Latin American Resources: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
E. S. Downs (2004) ‘The Chinese Energy Security Debate’, China Quarterly, 177, 49.
H. Innis (1977) The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History. Revised and reprinted edn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
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© 2016 Adam Lajeunesse and P. Whitney Lackenbauer
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Lajeunesse, A., Lackenbauer, P.W. (2016). Chinese Mining Interests and the Arctic. In: Berry, D.A., Bowles, N., Jones, H. (eds) Governing the North American Arctic. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137493910_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137493910_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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