China Just Found a Giant Gold Mine Worth $83 Billion — and There Might Be More

Geologists in China have hit the jackpot — literally. A superlarge gold deposit has been discovered deep beneath the Wangu field in Hunan Province, and it’s shaping up to be one of the biggest gold finds ever.

The discovery was made by a team from the Hunan Province Geological Disaster Survey and Monitoring Institute. Using a mix of good old-fashioned drilling and cutting-edge 3D geological modelling, they struck gold — and lots of it. Chen Rulin, an ore-prospecting expert at the Geological Bureau, told Chinese state media that many of the rock cores pulled up from 2,000 meters below the surface showed visible gold.

So far, they’ve identified over 40 separate gold veins, estimating about 300 tonnes of gold just from the current drilling. But it gets even crazier: if they keep drilling down to 3,000 meters as planned, there could be as much as 1,000 tonnes of gold waiting to be uncovered. That’s nearly eight times heavier than the Statue of Liberty and worth around 600 billion yuan, or $83 billion.

To put this into perspective: if these numbers are confirmed, this could be the largest single natural gold deposit left on Earth, potentially outshining South Africa’s South Deep gold mine, which holds around 930 tonnes.

Not surprisingly, the news sent gold prices soaring, hitting around $2,700 per ounce, just shy of a record high set earlier this year.

Even though China already leads the world in gold production, churning out about 10% of the global supply, the country still consumes three times more than it produces. That means it relies heavily on imports from places like South Africa and Australia. So, this discovery could be a big deal for cutting down that import bill, at least for a little while. Experts say the new mine could meet China's gold demand for just under a year and a half at current consumption rates.

Also, California might just outshine even this golden headline. A recent study revealed that a whopping 18 million tons of lithium — aka "white gold" — could be sitting under the Salton Sea. That’s enough lithium to power over 382 million EV batteries, making the U.S. potentially self-sufficient in lithium and breaking away from Chinese imports. Not bad, huh?

So whether it's gold in China or lithium in California, Earth’s still got a few surprises left. Now, if only we could find something like that under a random field in the UK — I’d be out there with a shovel tomorrow.