At the science and technology pageant held recently at Zijin Mining Group, Wang Dianzuo, Vice President of Chinese Academy of Engineering who was invited to attend the meeting, gave an objective yet extremely high appraisal of Zijin. His remarks are now published as follows, in order to let the society know Zijin, and also for the company staff to ponder on.
Many famous specialists and scholars attended the sci-tech conference at Zijin and they all made very good remarks. The conference was very successful and those who have made outstanding achievements in science and technology and made contributions to the technology of Zijin were honored and awarded at the conference. The conference does not have unwarranted reputation, instead it has substantial contents, and has achieved results in various aspects, which is very valuable. I think it is not common that a domestic mining enterprise could have held such a good meeting.
Zijin Mining Co., Ltd. has achieved very outstanding performance these years. And I should say that it is very excellent in the fields of mining, raw materials and material industry and it is very representative. The grade of the gold ore of Zijinshan is very low. And in the past few years, the price of the gold dropped. Nevertheless, it is quite remarkable for Zijin Mining, which is located in the mountain area west of Fujian, to have achieved so good performance, benefit, profit and various kinds of technological results. And it is still growing and progressing continuously.
Several years ago, there was a trend of thought in the world that regarding the raw material industry, metallurgical industry, resource industry and the traditional industries as the “sunset” industry. There were also lots of such sayings in the USA at that time. Many people turned to new industries, high-tech industries, industry, information industry, computer industry, commerce and new material industry. At that time, children of these “foreigners” like us who wanted to study towards master’s degrees in the US were easy to be enrolled in the specialties of geology, mining, ore dressing and metallurgy by the universities.
The reason was the Americans themselves did not want to study these subjects. They were interested in studying law, medicine and computer.
A few years ago, while I was working in the US, as far as I was informed, there was only one white American all over America who studied ore dressing for doctorate. I made a joke with the American professor, saying that at any rate, you had to let him graduate, that is, to reserve a seed. It turned out that this man left finally, he quitted. Basically these majors are pursued by Asians, Chinese, Koreans, and Africans and South Americans.
Recently， either they are influenced by the “911” incident, or other factors, the American mindset have slightly changed. They began to attach importance to the traditional industries, like the military, copper and iron, non-ferrous metal, mineral and resource industries.
Now someone says: there are only “sunset” enterprises, no “sunset” industries. If your enterprise applies the “sunset” management, “sunset” technology, “sunset” mechanism, then yours is a “sunset” enterprise; if your enterprise employs the “sunrise” management, “sunrise” mechanism, and “sunrise” technology, then yours is a “sunrise” enterprise.
An American computer company used to be far-famed, but now it has gone bankrupt. The reason is incorrect decision and adoption of the “sunset” technical line, which has resulted in the fact that a computer business has turned into the “sunset enterprise”.
To put the other way round, the annual copper and iron output of USA is over 0.3 billion tons, and its output of non-ferrous metals amounts to ten million tones, more than that of China. Its output value, profit payments and tax turnover, and its number of employees exceed that of the information industry up till now. The copper and iron industry has a history of many years. Take a look at the present copper and iron industry. Over a hundred years, calculated in the fixed price, the price of the raw materials has not risen. The price of the coal used for steel making has gone up, yet the price of the iron ore has remained stable. The reason that the absolute price of copper and iron has not continued appreciating is that the industry has kept carrying out technical reform and renovation. So long as you keep reforming and renovating it technically, it will not be the “sunset”, instead, the “sunrise”. Take Angang (Anshan Steel) for instance. Owing to a successful technical reformation, this old Chinese steel enterprise has regained its vitality.
Our Zijin Mining is a “sunrise” enterprise. Its profit for the first half of the year is one hundred million yuan, so splendid achievement, which has been achieved in such a place where the ore grade is low