During the past two decades, China had achieved remarkable economic growth with the annual average increase in GDP (Gross Domestic Growth) by 10%. The strong economic growth was aided by increasing domestic investment and export-oriented industrial production particularly after the participation of WTO (World Trade Organization) in 2001. In 2007, China ranked number one metal consuming country of copper,lead,zinc,nickel, aluminium and so on. Along with the expanding demand of metals, China became importing country of many mineral commodities except for rare metals such as rare earth,antimony and tungsten etc.
With the rapid increase of metal consumption, LME metal prices has been rising since 2003. Particularly, copper, zinc and nickel prices 4~6 times higher during 2003-2007. Especially, 2006 prices were skyrocketing, and even now in 2008 maintains the higher level of copper,aluminum,gold and so on. Higher metal prices are supported by expanding metal demands mainly by China, and inflow of speculative market into mineral commodity. The current higher metal prices have a great influence on world mining industry, and creating several issues from the viewpoint of countries, corporation, and stake holders.
This paper includes (1) current soaring prices of metals , (2) fact of expanding mineral consumption in China, (3) impact of higher metal prices on world major companies, (4) influences on Japanese smelting companies.
