China update

China update

15th September 2007

A Chinese lead smelter exploded last week, sending eight people to their deaths - yet it had been officially commissioned only a week before.

Last than a month ago, a similar "accident" occurred at an aluminium smelter in Shangong, claiming the lives of fourteen employees.

[see: http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press1615.htm ]

Although the Australian government last week refused to back the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Queensland's Minister for Mines and Energy says the Aboriginal Wik and Wik Way must give prior consent before Chalco can embark on its huge proposed integrated bauxite-alumininum project at Aurukun.

[for earlier story see: http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press1423.htm]

For a decade, the world's sixth biggest copper producer has supplied refined metal to China's Minmetals. Now, Poland's KGHM has concluded a major " strategic cooperation framework agreement" with the Chinese company, presaging expansion, not only at nonferrous mines within in the two countries, but similar projects elsewhere in the world.