China is a country in the world in which antimony was first used. In the Ming Dynasty (1541) the world's largest antimony locality-Xikuangshan-was discovered. In the term "Xikuangshan", "Xi" in Chinese refers to "tin", and "Kuangshan" means "mine", and therefore the complete name in English should be "tin mine" because at that time antimony was mistaken for "tin". Later in the Qing Dynasty (1890) the substance was tested and people began to know that it was antimony, rather than "tin". In 1897, the earliest antimony smelter (called "Jishan Chang" in Chinese) was constructed at Xikuangshan, and thus China entered an era of antimony production. In 1908, the Huachang Co. in Hunan Province introduced from France the volatization-baking technique to smelt antimony. Along with the rise of machine manufacturing, there occurred an expansion in the application of and demand for antimony. Following the Xikuangshan deposit, the Banxi (in Taojiang, Hunan), the Longshan (in Xinshan, Hunan) and the Woxi deposit (in Taoyuan of the same province) were successively developed, ranking Hunan's antimony industry Number One in the country. Thereafter, some antimony deposits were mined in succession in Guizhou, Yunnan and Guangxi. During the decades since 1908, China's antimony production generally accounted for over 50% of the world's total. The 1912~1935 antimony production of the Xikuangshan mine alone made up 36.6% of the world's total and 60.9% of the country's total. In 1942, Wang Chongyou, a famous nonferrous metallurgist in China and one of the earliest antimony metallurgist in the world, and Hodson, an American, jointly obtained a patent for the floatation-smelting (gaseous reduction-smelting) technique.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, large-scale geological prospecting and development of antimony deposits were carried out and a blast-furnace volatization technique was used to smelt ore concentrates of antimony sulfide. China's antimony ore reserve and production both occupy first place in the world, and its antimony products are exported in large quantities. The country also produces high-purity (99.999% Sb) metal antimony and high-quality superfine antimony white, representing an advanced production level of the world's antimony industry.