China's external cooperation and intercourse in mineral industry initiated soon after the founding of the New China, but it was after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) that it began to develop on a large scale. A review of the past half a century indicates that the whole course of China's external cooperation in the mineral industry can be roughly divided into 4 phases.

1.7.1.1 Phase of Receiving Foreign Assistance

The period of 1949~1957 was the first phase of external cooperation in the mineral industry. This period saw China's contacts mainly with the former USSR and East European countries such as Hungary and Poland and the external cooperation was characterized by receiving foreign aid. At that time, with the New China just founded, a thousand things waited to be done and all business remained to be revitalized. In order to rehabilitate economy and develop industry, the mineral industry was acutely required to provide substantial amounts of mineral resources and geological data. To keep abreast of this situation, the Chinese Government adopted measures in two aspects: it spared no efforts to help organize the mines left over from the old China so that they could resume production as soon as possible; it implemented the principle of vigorously transforming and developing geological work and  organized geological forces to search for and explore new mineral occurrences and build new mines to develop mineral resources. However, the technical forces for mineral exploration and development left over from the old China were very weak and lacked experience in large-scale geological exploration and mineral development, so they were unable to meet the need to unfold large-scale mineral exploration and development activities. As the national economic construction could not afford to wait, the people's government considered it necessary to invite foreign experts to China to help carry out mineral exploration and development work, while it devoted great efforts to developing education to train China's own technical professionals in geology and mining. In this connexion, the geological and mining departments of China signed a series of cooperative contracts with their counterparts of the former Soviet Union and some East European countries, inviting a group of foreign experts to China as advisors and consultants to help work out development programmes, establish and improve rules, regulations and systems, guide geological exploration, mine construction and mineral development activities and conduct cooperative scientific researches. The Sino-USSR cooperative projects undertaken included the 1¡Ã200000-scale regional geological surveys in areas of the Nanling Mountains, Qinling Mountains, Da Hinggan Mountains and Altay Mountains; metallic and nonmetallic minerals reconnaissance prospectings in 10-add provinces (autonomous regions) such as Sichuan and Yunnan; petroleum reconnaissance surveys, aerial surveys, geodetic surveys and geophysical explorations in Northwest China and North China; and research projects on major subjects about the Pacific metallogenic belt within the territories of China and USSR. The cooperative projects between China and East European countries included the Sino-Hungarian joint petroleum geophysical exploration and studies in the Ordos and Songliao Basins and the Sino-Polish cooperative groundwater studies in North China. It can be said definitely that the cooperation between China and the former USSR and East European countries in this period played an important role in promoting the development of China's geological exploration and mineral exploitation activities of that time as well as the subsequent growth of China's mineral industry.

1.7.1.2 Phase of Transformation From Receiving Foreign Assistance to Providing Assistance to Foreign Countries (1957~1971)

The external cooperation of this phase was characterized by a gradual transformation from receiving assistance from other countries to providing assistance to other countries and from cooperating with the former USSR and East European countries to cooperating with the third-world countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Following the rehabilitation of the national economy and the successful accomplishment of the First Five-Year Plan, the national economy scored considerable development, some construction experience was preliminarily accumulated and a group of specialized technical personnel grew up and played an  increasingly greater role in mineral activities. With large numbers of technical specialists in possession, China began to dispatch geologists to other countries such as Cuba, Mongolia and Cambodia at the invitation of their respective governments to assist them in carrying out geological and mineral reconnaissance and prospecting from 1957. Then from 1962 on, the Sino-USSR cooperative activities greatly diminished due to the twists and turns in the relationship between the two countries on the one hand, and China's external cooperation and intercourse in mineral industry got strengthened as a result of the development of the relations between China and over 30 third-world countries on the other hand. China's cooperation with third-world countries in mineral industry covered two areas:¢Ù dispatching experts to help recipient countries to conduct mineral resources exploration so as to prepare raw materials bases for mine construction;¢Ú dispatching specialists and drilling teams to assist recipient countries in the search and development of groundwater so as to help overcome the difficulties in the use of water for industrial and agricultural production and the livelihood of the local people. Starting from the 60s, with the cooperation and exchange with the third-world countries strengthened, China's Ministry of Geology and Mineral Resources successively sent out 128 groups and operation teams to 37 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe to assist in looking for groundwater and well drilling and completion and accomplished 165 operation projects with 738 wells completed. In the process of completing these projects the Chinese engineers and technicians implemented strictly and conscientiously the Chinese government's principles and policies on external cooperation, observed the laws, customs and habits of the recipient countries, paid due attention to the training of local technical forces, transferred to them the technologies for groundwater search and well drilling and completion without reservation, and thus were highly evaluated and appreciated by the recipient countries.

1.7.1.3 Phase of Initial Bidirectional Cooperation (1972~1978)

As an important feature of China's external cooperation and intercourse, this period witnessed the successive restoration of China's legitimate seat in the United Nations and the legitimate seat of the Geological Society of China in the International Union of Geological Sciences, which created favorable conditions for the expansion of the external cooperation and exchange in the mineral industry. The external cooperation of this phase consisted mainly of the following aspects: ¢Ùcontinued cooperation with third-world countries in the fields of geology, mineral resources, hydrogeology and engineering geology in the form of external economic assistance projects; ¢Ú signing and implementation of long-range agreements on scientific and technological cooperation in geology with a number of developed countries in Europe, America and Oceania (Australia) and introduction of some complete sets of equipment and instruments applied to geological researches and mineral exploration and development from abroad; ¢Ûparticipation in a number of international conferences or multilateral cooperative meetings related to geology and mining; and ¢Ümutual exchange of visits of governmental geological and mining delegations.

1.7.1.4 Phase of Comprehensive External Cooperation (1979-present)

Since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh CPC Central Committee, as a result of the implementation of the principle of opening wider to the outside world on the front of the mineral industry, three big strides have been made in China's international cooperation in the mineral industry, thus ushering in a completely new phase of comprehensive external cooperation. In this phase the external cooperation has developed ¢Ù from the scientific and technological cooperation and exchange in geology and mining with a small number of countries to the all-directional cooperation and exchange with all countries of the world, ¢Ú from the scientific-technological cooperation and exchange in mining to both scientific-technological and economic cooperation and exchange in mining , and ¢Û from undertaking mineral exploration and development activities in China by using foreign funds, technology and talants to conducting cooperation in mining abroad by both "inviting in" and "walking out", i.e., Chinese mining enterprises going to other friendly countries to explore and develop mineral resources China is short of by using their own talants, equipment, technology and funds.