Research on diversity of mineral resources carrying capacity in Chinese mining cities

• 21 mining cities are from National resources city sustainable development planning.
• Indicators are selected from economy, society, potential and environment.
• The diversity of MRCC are analyzed in different types and regions.
• Recommendations are proposed for development in mining cities.

From four dimensions of economy, society, potential and environment, we select seven indicators including economy scale, contribution to GDP and employment, guarantee period, the discharge of industrial waste water, sulfur dioxide and smoke dust to build the evaluation index system of Mineral Resources Carrying Capacity (MRCC). Then index system evaluation method is used to evaluate the diversity of MRCC in Chinese mining cities selected from the National resources city sustainable development planning (2013–2020). The final result shows that: ① MRCC is stronger in the central, western mining cities and growing mining cities which have great potential for mining industry.② Mature and growing mining cities exhibit stable or good mining economy, which have higher contribution to GDP and employment; with good economic transformation, regenerating mining cities have higher economy scale and longer guarantee period; the environmental pollution is much more serious in growing mining cities.③ The coordination between mineral resources exploitation and environment need to be improved urgently in many mining cities, especially the western and the growing ones. Thus this paper suggests focusing on improving the contribution to GDP in growing and regenerating mining cities, ameliorating the reemployment in the central, western and recession mining cities, extending the guarantee period of mineral resources in declining mining cities, coordinating mineral resources exploitaion and environment in western and growing mining cities.