The Countries That Are the Biggest Miners in the World.

Byline: Katharina Buchholz

China is not only a big user and exporter of minerals - it is also the world's biggest miner as far as countries go.

In 2017, the latest year available with the World Mining Congresses, China excavated almost 4.1 billion metric tons of fossil fuels and iron as well as non-ferrous and other metals. The biggest single contributor to this statistic was coal - listed as a mineral fuel -, of which more than 3 billion tons were excavated. The second most excavated mineral in China was iron, of which the country extracted 330 million tons.

Similar to China, many countries in the top 10 of the world's biggest miners relied almost exclusively on...

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