Canada’s crackdown on Chinese investment in critical minerals will make it harder for miners to produce the metals needed for the global energy transition, according to Ivanhoe Mines founder“We’re going to be deprived of all this Chinese capital in all these junior mining companies,” the billionaire mining magnate told a packed auditorium in Toronto on Sunday. “It’s really getting harder out there to be a miner.
The new rules create a financial quandary for Canadian miners who’ve relied on China as a reliable source of funding. China has built up stakes in more than two dozen Canadian mining companies, including some of the industry’s biggest names, according to a Bloomberg analysis. Citic Metal Africa and Zijin Mining Group, two firms closely linked to the Chinese government, hold a combined 39.5% stake in Friedland’s Ivanhoe Mines. Jiangxi Copper Co. owns 18.
“We’re going to need a lot more money coming to junior mining. I mean, orders of magnitude more,” he said. Canada’s new rules don’t identify countries, but the updates are part of a new policy approach toward China, which Prime Ministergovernment has described as an “increasingly disruptive global power” that disregards international rules and norms.