Many mineral collectors shy away from Chinese minerals mostly because they are so abundant that many people think they have little value. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Collectors just need to look at the specimens- the Chinese have discovered minerals of amazing quality in their country that are destined to be classics in the future as are specimens from most other nations that flooded them market in the past with specimens such as Germany, Italy, the US, Mexico, Brazil, or Russia.
While China does not produce many unusual examples of minerals, it has given us the most spectacular examples of many valuable species of minerals such as scheelite, babingtonite, stibnite, and cinnabar which have been produced in extremely large quantities. Many of the mines in china produce specimens in extremely large quantities because it is thankfully very cost effective for them to do so. Chinese mines are only moderately mechanized. Ore still is usually removed by hand so miners can easily remove and set aside specimens throughout their day. Entire mines often work to collectively extract specimens, which can be a substantial supplement to the income of miners. This is unlike most other places in the world where mineral specimens are not seen as valuable and smelted down for their value as ore. Either that or many mines are so mechanized that it is impossible to remove specimens. Even mines in very developed countries such as the USA and Australia often do not bother to save mineral specimens.
China therefore may be doing the best thing possible to preserve the hobby of mineral collecting and science of mineralogy for the future. As the US and Europe become so developed that no more mining is performed in either region, mineral collecting becomes a forgotten hobby. China is a nation that is still rapidly industrializing and mining still takes place on a large scale to feed its needs and the hunger for resources that nations that cannot extract them experience. As long as this pressure to produce ore is placed on China, mineral specimens will be collected. Also, new regions for minerals will continue to be discovered into the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if China, with it’s growing middle class and culturally reinforced curiosity about rocks and minerals, becomes the new nexus of the mineral collecting hobby.