During this time, the price of gold was really crazy.
Affected by factors such as global economic turmoil and intensified geopolitical risks, the international gold price has soared, continuously breaking historical records, and the domestic retail price of gold has also risen.
As of April 6, the retail price of gold of various brands was as high as 680 yuan/gram, and some stores even exceeded the 700 yuan/gram mark.
Some industry insiders said that they have been in the industry for many years and have never encountered such a bullish market, "It's really a price a day, and I am witnessing history every day." ”
In the face of rising gold prices, some people are happy and some are worried, and the most profitable one is probably Chen Jinghe, the "Golden King of China".
● Chen Jinghe
As the head of "China's largest gold mine", Zijin Mining led by Chen Jinghe has soared by more than 100 billion yuan in market value in two months, ranking among the 400 billion giants.
Many people expressed envy, saying that he had caught the wealth of the sky.
In fact, only those who know him know how difficult it has been for him to come this way.
Desperate counterattack, his wave of wealth and wealth, I am afraid that he will not be able to catch it by another person.
"Asia's No. 1 Explosion"
Purple Mountain Gold Mine has a series of titles, occupying a number of national firsts:
It is the first gold mine in China, the largest gold mine in China, and the largest gold mine in the world.
But it is such a "golden mountain" that almost fell into the hands of foreign capital back then.
It was Chen Jinghe who kept it and led Zijin Mining, which was still a county-level enterprise at the time, to become one of the top ten gold mining enterprises in the world step by step.
● Purple Mountain Gold Mine
It was February 1997, just after the Spring Festival, Chen Jinghe, as the manager of Zijin Mining, stood at the venue of the all-staff meeting and asked a very tragic question:
"How are we going to live?"
At that time, Zijin Mining was a wholly state-owned enterprise, but foreign investors were eyeing it to take away its only mine, Zijin Mountain.
Located in Shanghang County, Longyan City, Fujian Province, Purple Mountain was once considered a "chicken rib mine" due to its low gold reserves and difficult mining.
When Chen Jinghe came here in 1992, there were only 76 employees and an annual profit of only 30,000 yuan, and he led the employees to work hard for many years, gradually finding a suitable way to mine, and the proven gold reserves also increased significantly, from 5.45 tons to about 50 tons, an increase of nearly 10 times.
He was about to show his strength, and foreign giants heard about it.
Australia's Xingsheng National Resources Company, taking advantage of the limelight of domestic investment attraction, on the one hand, sent the world's top exploration team to carry out "supplementary exploration" of the Purple Mountain, and on the other hand, submitted a development plan to the local government, hoping to buy the gold mining rights.
The price they give is quite generous:
The initial investment is 12 million US dollars, and Xingsheng Company is all-inclusive;
In the follow-up investment, either the Chinese side will contribute 4% and enjoy 4% of the bonus, or the Chinese side will not get any of the dividends and enjoy 2.5% of the bonus.
And, in order to "stabilize" Chen Jinghe, they gave Chen Jinghe a very generous treatment, promising that after foreign capital took over, Chen Jinghe could continue to be a manager with an annual salary of 300,000 yuan.
You must know that Chen Jinghe's monthly salary and bonus added up to less than 3,000 yuan at that time.
Faced with a huge temptation, Chen Jinghe refused. At the staff mobilization meeting, he generously stated:
"No one has a deeper affection for the Purple Mountain than me, from graduating from university to now, I have been with the Purple Mountain for 15 years, the gold mine was discovered by me with my participation, and the gold was also mined by our own hands, I can't watch the country's treasures fall into the hands of foreigners in vain!"
If we want to win the battle with foreign investment, the key is to make a set of development plans that are better than foreign investment.
Chen Jinghe began to race against time, he drew up a set of "domestic investment plan", and flew directly to Beijing with Zheng Ruzhan, then secretary of the Shanghang County Party Committee, and Ke Deyu, general manager of the Provincial Gold Group, to report their representations to the State Gold Administration.
So there was a dramatic scene -
In the Fuzhou Hot Spring Hotel, Xingsheng Company is holding a grand celebration costing millions of yuan to celebrate the arrival of the Purple Mountain Mine in advance. The gongs and drums were noisy, and the guests were each given a Montblanc gold pen with a price of nearly 10,000 yuan;
At the same time in Beijing, in the conference room of the State Gold Administration, Chen Jinghe and his entourage cautiously reported on the development of the Purple Mountain Mine, making a final fight for the fate of the Purple Mountain Mine.
According to the "domestic investment plan" proposed by Chen Jinghe, after the completion of the mining of Purple Mountain, the total profit obtained is 5.9 billion yuan;
According to the "foreign investment plan" provided by Xingsheng Company earlier, the Chinese side can only obtain 348 million yuan in income and about 850 million yuan in income tax, which adds up to only 1.2 billion yuan.
Compared with the two, the Chinese side lost more than 4 billion yuan.
The leaders of the bureau were shocked after hearing this, and Wang Dexue, then director of the Gold Administration, said with emotion: "You dare to take responsibility and are very responsible, how can the resources of Purple Mountain be so good to sell to foreign companies so cheaply?"
He made a decision on the spot to support Zijin Mining's independent development of the Zijin Mountain mine, and implemented the "large-scale open-pit mining plan" proposed by Chen Jinghe.
With the support of the higher authorities, Chen Jinghe returned to the Purple Mountain Mine and began to sprint for production capacity.
On December 17, 1997, after more than two months of deployment, with a shocking bang, Chen Jinghe used more than 1,000 tons of explosives to open the more than 30-meter-high wasteland layer on the top of Purple Mountain, opening the prelude to large-scale open mining in Purple Mountain Mine.
This thousand-ton blast was known as "the first explosion in Asia" at that time, and more than 1 million cubic meters of waste soil and rocks on the top of Purple Mountain were thrown into the deep ditch of Beikou under the huge waves of the explosion.
● On December 17, 1997, the "1,000-ton level" of Purple Mountain Mine was successfully blasted
Compared with conventional manual excavation, the whole plan saved more than half a year of time and more than 10 million yuan in stripping costs, and the Purple Mountain Mine has entered the fast lane of development.
More importantly, this explosion shattered the covetousness of foreign capital and made them see the determination of the Chinese in this contest. Xingsheng Company had no chance to take advantage of it, and finally withdrew from the market.
At the celebration banquet, Chen Jinghe shed tears in front of his colleagues for the first time, he said:
"I didn't expect that running a business would be so difficult, so complicated, and cause so much trouble......"
He defended the Purple Mountain and defended the interests of the country.
In 1998, with an annual output of 958 kilograms of gold, Zijin Mining ranked 25th in the "National Gold Mine Rankings" for the first time, and was designated as one of the "Top Ten Gold Enterprise Groups" by the Gold Administration Bureau because of its huge development potential.
In 1999, Zijin Mining doubled its output to 2,968 kilograms of gold per year, ranking first in the country.
According to the gold price of 110 yuan per gram at that time, Chen Jinghe took out 326 million yuan worth of gold from Purple Mountain in just one year.
From unknown nationality to the first in the country, Chen Jinghe led the employees of Zijin to create a miracle belonging to the Chinese.
A little stone turned into gold, and he became a god in a war
In the eyes of many people, Chen Jinghe is resolute, daring and daring, and is quite a visionary entrepreneur.
In fact, he is a typical scientific research worker, with the highest professional title - professor-level senior engineer, and enjoys a special allowance from the State Council.
Even now, when I search on CNKI, I can still find more than 60 papers in which he has participated.
● Chen Jinghe's paper published in 1992
Chen Jinghe is a Hakka who was born in 1957 in a family of teachers in the Yongding mining area of Longyan City, Fujian Province.
He grew up in the mines, and he had a keen interest in stones.
He liked to collect stones, and the stones he picked up in the yard were piled up into a small hill, and once accidentally, the stones from the "top of the mountain" rolled down and almost broke his arm.
My arm was swollen for a month, and I couldn't lift it up when I was eating and bathing.
In a fit of rage, my father found a wagon, and it took him two trips to finish hauling his stones, and he fell into the ditch with all his brains.
Chen Jinghe was very distressed, but he didn't dare to disobey his father.
The "stone mountain" that was thrown away by his father became an eternal regret in his heart, and he turned this regret into motivation, studied hard, and his geography grades were particularly excellent, and he was admitted to Fuzhou University majoring in geology.
As the so-called interest is the best teacher, Chen Jinghe worked hard to learn professional knowledge, and after graduation, he entered the Fujian Minxi Geological Brigade, and later transferred to Purple Mountain to be responsible for geological exploration.
He also formed a lifelong fate with Purple Mountain.
● Chen Jinghe, who conducted geological exploration in the Purple Mountain in his youth
The Purple Mountain is rich in gold and copper, with the earliest mining history dating back to the Kangding period of the Song Dynasty in 1040 AD.
However, from 1960 to the early 80s, the state invested a lot of manpower and material resources in exploration in the Purple Mountain area, but no significant mineral deposits were found.
In order to find the gold deposit, Chen Jinghe led the exploration team to conduct a thorough and meticulous survey in the mountainous area of more than 30 square kilometers.
They carried twenty or thirty kilograms of ore samples on their backs every day, carried them down from the mountain to the laboratory for testing, and later simply moved to live in a ruined temple at an altitude of more than 800 meters above sea level in the Purple Mountain, where they lived for more than two months.
The exploration conditions were very difficult, with more than 20 people sleeping in the open air, and only one bucket of water a day, "as dirty as a wild man".
● Chen Jinghe at work
The hard work paid off, and in 1984, they finally found the location of the gold mine.
However, when experts from the industrial sector conducted developmental industrial trials, it was found that the total gold reserves were only about 5.45 tons, and they were low-grade ores, with high mining costs and low value.
What is a low-grade mine?
"Grade" is the core quality index of ore, taking domestic gold mines as an example, the gold content of more than 5 g/t belongs to high grade and is easy to mine;
The gold content of 2-5 g/t belongs to the medium grade, and it is relatively difficult to mine;
When the gold content is less than 2 g/t, it is a low grade, which is often difficult to mine and has a high refining cost.
At that time, the average grade of the Purple Mountain Mine was less than 1 gram per tonne, which means that after a series of steps such as mining, beneficiation and smelting, only 1 gram of gold could be obtained from 1 ton of ore.
Coupled with the low total reserves, the state devolved the Purple Mountain Mine to the local government in 1992 and handed over the mining rights to the Shanghang County government.
In order to mine this "rare" amount of gold, 35-year-old Chen Jinghe voluntarily quit his job at the Institute of Geological Sciences and applied to be transferred to Shanghang County Mining Company (the predecessor of Zijin Mining).
The people around him didn't understand his decision: what did he want to do if he was transferred from the provincial capital to the countryside and gave up the original promotion channel?
Chen Jinghe said: "The Purple Mountain is where I come in, and I believe there are big mines there." ”
● Shanghang County Mining Company
Chen Jinghe, who worked as a manager at the Shanghang County Mining Company, got up early and worked hard to do his best, but the work did not go smoothly.
The first phase of the project required an investment of 29 million yuan, and he ran around and only won a bank loan of 3.5 million yuan.
The money was a drop in the bucket, and in order to keep the project running, he took the plunge and offered to refine the gold using a "heap leaching process" with less investment.
But his idea was soon unanimously opposed by experts.
Why?
Generally speaking, heap leaching is only suitable for the dry climate of the north, and there is no precedent for its application in the humid and rainy south.
Chen Jinghe defended the crowd and told them that he had been in the Purple Mountain for nearly 10 years and knew every inch of land here, and that most of the land here was shallow oxide ore, and that he could try heap leaching.
In the end, Chen Jinghe won.
In 1993, the first phase of the Purple Mountain project was completed, which originally required an investment of 29 million yuan, but he only spent 7 million yuan to complete it, and produced 9.3 kilograms of gold that year.
Later, Chen Jinghe optimized the mining grade of the heap leaching method from 1 g/t to 0.2 g/t through several technical improvements, turning a large amount of waste ore into a mineable treasure mine.
The proven gold reserves of Purple Mountain also continued to increase, from 5.45 tons to more than 50 tons, and later to more than 300 tons, gradually establishing the status of the first gold mine in China.
Turning stones into gold, Chen Jinghe became a god in the field of "mineral gold".
There is a mine at home, and there is no panic in my heart
Chen Jinghe was not carried away by success, he knew very clearly that no matter how big the gold mountain was, there would be a day when it would be hollowed out.
In order not to "sit on the mountain", he tried to enter the field of "smelting gold", and purchased gold ore from other mining companies that did not meet the content standards from outside, and extracted the gold in it.
He invested 105.6 billion yuan in this regard, but only made a profit of 600 million yuan, and the gross profit margin was only 0.6%.
This figure is very different from the 51.4% gross profit margin of Mineral Gold (which is mined from the mining of gold ore).
This made Chen Jinghe realize that if mining companies want to become bigger and stronger, the most effective way is to buy mines and develop them themselves.
Zijin Mining was changed from a wholly state-owned enterprise to a state-controlled company in 1998, successfully listed on the Hong Kong stock market in 2003, and returned to the A-share market in 2008 and was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
● On April 25, 2008, Zijin Mining was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Chen Jinghe (left) rang the listing bell
With the influx of capital and the rapid expansion of Zijin Mining, Chen Jinghe has also been very bold to start a crazy "buy, buy, buy" mode on a global scale.
In 2012, when the price of gold plummeted, Chen Jinghe spent 188 million Australian dollars (about 895 million yuan) to buy an 89.15% stake in Norton Goldfield, one of Australia's largest gold mining companies, and completed a 100% stake in Norton Goldfield a few years later.
The 185.4 tonnes of gold resources owned by Norton Gold Field have since been owned by Zijin Mining.
● Night view of the "Norton Gold Fields" gold mine
Between 2014 and 2016, when global mineral prices continued to fall, Chen Jinghe took a decisive move to acquire half of the interests in the Kamoa-Kakula copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo and half of the Bogra gold mine in Papua New Guinea.
The former is the largest copper mine in Africa, and the latter is one of the top 10 gold mines in the world.
● Kamoa-Kakula Copper Mine
Before the global copper price rebounded in 2018, Chen Jinghe extended his tentacles to Europe, acquiring a 63% stake in RTB BOR, a Serbian state-owned copper company, and won a "100% interest in the upper belt mine" and "60.4% interest in the lower belt mine" of the Timok gold mine in Serbia.
In the same way, he has successively acquired a number of world-class high-quality minerals such as the Buritica Gold Mine in Colombia, the Aurora Gold Mine in Guyana and the Rosebel Gold Mine in Suriname.
By 2021, Zijin Mining was firmly in the top spot among China's mining companies, with gold and copper resources equivalent to 41% and 75% of the country's total reserves, respectively.
Chen Jinghe has gained fame and fortune, and as the chairman of Zijin Mining, he always maintains the vigilance and forward-looking nature that the company's top leaders should have.
In recent years, with the rapid rise of the new energy industry, he is keenly aware of the new outlet, and has begun to compete for new energy minerals - lithium mines on a global scale.
"In the face of the energy revolution, if we remain indifferent, we will make a big mistake," he said. ”
In 2021, Zijin Mining won the lithium salt lake project in Catamarca Province in northwest Argentina for about RMB 4.939 billion, which is currently one of the largest and highest-grade lithium salt lake projects in the world.
Later, Chen Jinghe acquired a 15% interest in the Manono lithium mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which is also a world-class large-scale lithium mine and ranks first among the world's hard rock lithium deposits.
● Zijin Mining's salt lake lithium project in Argentina
By the end of 2023, Zijin Mining has 2,998 tons of gold resources, more than 74 million tons of copper resources, and more than 13 million tons of lithium carbonate resources, with an annual revenue of 293.404 billion yuan, becoming the world's largest gold enterprise and the sixth largest metal mining company.
What was once a small county-level factory that was almost bought by foreign capital is now a world-class mining giant.
It generates tens of billions of profits every year, and more importantly, the minerals it controls are hard currency and have vital strategic importance for the country.
With a huge mine in hand, we are not panicked and full of confidence.
After 30 years of ups and downs, Chen Jinghe has dedicated his best youth to Zijin Mining.
Now 67 years old, he still fights on the front line every day, even if there are many affairs, he often has to go to the front line of various mining areas to check the quality of ore.
In the eyes of employees, Chen Jinghe is easy-going and has no shelves, even though he is worth tens of billions, he still looks like an authentic mountain man.
He is a technical background, and he has the rigor and low-key of a technician in his bones.
From a geological prospector to the head of a 100 billion empire, Chen Jinghe has realized the transformation of his life and worked hard to defend the interests of the motherland by relying on 30 years of unremitting deep cultivation. Text/Mulong idler