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Meredith Chen

China will start a six-year nationwide geoscience survey in early 2025 aiming to find natural resources to support the country’s quest for self-reliance.
The research initiative – called SinoProbe II – is being conducted at a cost of US$1 billion, aiming to create a subterranean map of the country, according to a report on the Science magazine website on Monday.
Thousands of researchers from a number of institutions will work together on the project, overseen by the China Geological Survey, and they are expected to drill to record-setting depths for the study.
Its focus is to help the country reduce its dependence on imported fossil fuels and ores like iron and aluminium, according to the report.
“We need to firmly grasp resource security,” Dong Shuwen, a geologist with Nanjing University who came up with the SinoProbe project, was quoted as saying.
He said China’s shallower natural resources – those located within 500 metres (1,640ft) of the surface – were “almost depleted”.


The survey could also facilitate the study of fundamental science questions including India’s slow-motion collision with Eurasia and the rise of the Tibetan Plateau, according to the report.
It follows the SinoProbe I survey launched more than a decade ago that led to the discovery of strategic mineral reserves such as uranium, used in nuclear power plants and weapons.
The latest initiative was previewed at an international symposium on deep-Earth exploration in Beijing last month.
Larry Brown, a geophysicist from Cornell University, said the scope of SinoProbe II was “mind-boggling”. “I can’t think of any kind of geoscience it doesn’t cover, except atmospheric sciences,” he was quoted as saying.
The researchers are expected to chart ore formations and fossil fuel basins as deep as 3km (1.9 miles), as well as develop extraction technologies.
That could bring “immediate returns” on investment, Mian Liu, a geophysicist with the University of Missouri, was quoted as saying.
Beijing has been pushing for China to become technologically self-reliant and to ensure energy security, calling for “breakthroughs” in minerals exploration and to increase reserves and production.
Green technologies could benefit from SinoProbe II as researchers hunt for the critical minerals needed for solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicle batteries, the report said.
Critical minerals are found in a variety of ore deposits and are considered vital to economic and national security. They are also vulnerable to supply disruption.
Over the last year, Beijing has tightened its grip on critical mineral shipments including antimony, gallium, germanium and graphite, raising concerns in industries such as semiconductors, electric vehicles and defence, which rely heavily on the materials.
Deep-Earth exploration can help reveal the structure, activity processes and dynamic mechanisms of the lithosphere – the solid, outermost layer of the Earth – and opens up new opportunities for deep-mineral exploration, the Beijing Institute of Space Science and Technology Information said in a paper published on Wednesday.
The US has been conducting a similar mineral survey known as the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative – an effort to identify geological formations across the country that could contain critical minerals using aircraft, radar and land surveys.
Deep-Earth exploration and studies have also been conducted in Australia, Europe and Russia.
China has also been expanding exploration and development of deep geothermal energy – a stable, reliable and green low-carbon renewable energy source – as the world’s second-largest economy tries to phase out fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy.
While the country has abundant geothermal resources most have been directly extracted from shallow and medium depths, and researchers are trying to find ways to more effectively use deep geothermal resources to improve energy security.

The latest survey will build on work done in SinoProbe I to create a clear image of the Earth’s crust near the surface.
In that study, researchers placed geophones and seismometers in over a dozen provinces, set off explosions at the surface and recorded the seismic waves that bounced back from underground rock layers, which helped them understand what lies beneath the surface.
This seismic study will be carried out on a much larger scale for SinoProbe II, with researchers expected to collect some 20,000km of seismic profiles, according to the Science report.
It said thousands of seismometers would also be used to detect earthquakes and explore the deeper structure down to the Earth’s core.
A similar US project called EarthScope mapped North America’s subsurface over 20 years, at a cost of US$200 million, with the seismometers 70km apart. That compares to the SinoProbe II project, where sensors will be just 35km apart to achieve higher resolution.
From 2027, SinoProbe II will also involve ultra-deep drilling, with a plan to drill more than 10km deep and the technology eventually refined so that depths of 13-15km are possible.
That would be a record depth, beating the 12.2km Kola Superdeep Borehole drilled by the Soviet Union last century on the Kola Peninsula, near the Russian border with Norway.
China in March passed the 10km mark on a superdeep borehole for scientific exploration, an ongoing project in the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang, state news agency Xinhua reported.
Dong from Nanjing University said Tibet was one place where the superdeep borehole could be drilled and sediment cores “could offer a record of the whole process of formation of the Tibetan Plateau”, according to the Science report.


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Tibet is said to be one place where a superdeep borehole could be drilled for the SinoProbe II project. Photo: Shutterstock


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China

Politics

Thousands of researchers will work on US$1 billion SinoProbe II study over six years to create subterranean map of the country


Thousands of researchers will work on US$1 billion SinoProbe II study over six years to create subterranean map of the country.


China energy security