It appears a few days cannot go by lately without news of China making a foray into foreign mining. However, due to their stealth tactics, most of us probably do not know that China has increased their foreign mining acquisitions by about 60X in 2008 compared to the same period last year.

Furthermore, other big miners are starting to move fast to acquire the limited supply of proven reserves worldwide. I have provided 3 brief excerpts below that give recent evidence of both activities since the individual articles are rather long. However for those interested, links to the complete articles are provided as well.

Going once, going twice... - VHF

Article #1: http://tinyurl.com/4sysfk

"The value of announced cross-border acquisitions by China so far this calendar year is now US$24.5 billion from 56 deals according to Thomson Financial-already almost equaling the record of $US29.8 billion for all of 2007," according to Colleen Ryan in the Financial Review. As usual in the financial world, the easiest way to find where asset prices are headed is to follow the money.

"China's acquisitions of foreign targets reached US$15 billion in the mining sector-the most active sector, largely comprising companies engaged in metals, mining, and chemicals-rising from just US$243 million in the same period last year," Ryan writes.

Article #2: http://tinyurl.com/3f4dtw

Article #3: http://tinyurl.com/4uygve

Canadian base-metals miner Teck Cominco will pocket another large copper deposit, this time in Chile, after agreeing to buy Vancouver-based junior Global Copper.

Global controls the Relincho copper/molybdenum deposit, which, based on current resource estimates, would increase Teck Cominco's measured and indicated copper resources by about 25% on a contained copper basis, president and CEO Don Lindsay said.