(TibetanReview.net, Sep29’25) – China said Sep 28 that it had commenced producing lithium from two major salt lake mines in Tibet as questions about the genuineness of its claimed commitment to environmental protection came into sharp focus when the Chinese-owned Canadian outdoor brand Arc’teryx and the famed visual artist Cai Guoqiang carried out a 3,000-metre-long ‘rising dragon’ series of fireworks over the Himalayan mountains in Gyantse County of Shigatse City, Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), on Sep 19.
On the morning of Sep 28, the integrated project with an annual capacity of 40,000 tonnes of primary lithium salts and the separate project with an annual output of 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate successfully commenced production in Golmud (Tibetan: Nagormo) City, Haixi (Tsonub) Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai province, reported mysteel.net Sep 28.
Both the production facilities are owned by China Salt Lake Industry Group Co., Ltd. This is a joint venture between China Minmetals Corp, a Chinese state-owned enterprise headquartered in Beijing, and Qinghai province, and was officially inaugurated in Qinghai in February this year.
On the same day, Tibet Mineral Development Co., Ltd. announced that after strenuous efforts, the 10,000 mt battery-grade lithium carbonate project for the green and comprehensive development and utilization of the Zabuye Salt Lake in Tibet successfully completed a 120-hour functional assessment from Sep 20 to 24, 2025, marking the project’s official commencement of production, reported news.metal.com Sep 28.
The Zabuye Salt Lake, located in a remote, high-altitude area of TAR’s Shigatse City, is said to hold among the world’s largest lithium brine deposits.
Tibet Mineral Development Company Limited, known as Tibet Mining, is a partly state-owned enterprise engaged in the exploration, mining, processing, and sales of non-ferrous mineral resources in TAR. The company focuses on chromium, copper, and increasingly lithium resources. It operates under the control of China Baowu Iron & Steel Group, one of the largest state-owned steel companies in China.
Tibetans see China’s mining of Tibet’s minerals as not only a colonial plunder of resources from a country it occupied by brute armed annexation in the middle of the last century but also a destruction of its fragile environment with major global Implications.