China has poor reserves of PGMs, with only 400 tons of PGMs in total. China's platinum resources have been discovered and used since the 1960s. In 1959, the Jinchuan mine containing platinum, copper and nickel was discovered. In 1966, the nickel electrolysis workshop was put into operation, which marked the official production and utilization of China's platinum resources. Since the 1970s, China has begun to recover platinum from low-grade platinum containing lean ores, as well as from the smelting of polymetallic ores and porphyry copper ores. In recent years, China's reserves of PGMs have been stable at about 370 tons. According to the China Mineral Resources Report 2019 released by the Ministry of Natural Resources, China's reserves of PGMs have been about 401 tons in 2018.

Platinum resources in China have the following characteristics :(1) Concentrated distribution of resources. More than 95% of China's PGM resources are distributed in Gansu, Yunnan, Sichuan, Heilongjiang and Hebei provinces, of which Gansu province alone accounts for 57.5% of the country's reserves. The reserves in these provinces are concentrated in three large deposits: Jinchuan in Gansu, Jinbaoshan in Yunnan and Yangliuping in Sichuan. (2) Low ore grade. The grade of China's proven platinum ore is 0.34 g/t, which is only 1/3-1/5 of the industrial requirement set by the National Reserves Committee (1985). Compared with foreign large platinum deposits, such as Bushveld complex (3.1-17.1 g/t) in South Africa, Meilons base (30-60 g/t), Norilsk (6-350 g/t) in Russia, and Stillwater (147 g/t) in the United States, the grade is obviously lower and the resource endowment is poor. (3) There are various types of deposits, most of which are symbiotic or associated deposits. The types of PGM deposits in China include magmatic ionization, hydrothermal remolding and platinite deposits, while some of them are found in black rock series, hydrothermal or skarn type polymetallic deposits and porphyry copper-molybdenum deposits. The 1996 statistics show that 93.4% of PGMs (proved reserves) are associated with or associated with Cu-Ni sulphides and polymetallics. The Jinchuan Cu-Ni sulfide deposit has large reserves and large scale, but the PGMs with low grade can only be recovered from the smelting process. Some other deposits, such as Jinbaoshan and Zhubu Cu-Ni sulfide deposits, have relatively high grade of PGM, but low content of Cu-Ni sulfide. They are all poor ores of Cu, Ni and Pt. The grade of platinum group metals is very unstable in the area where chromite ultramafic rock is exposed.

Platinum production in China is stable and rigid. According to data from the Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, China's platinum output fluctuates between 2.5-3 tons per year. Tongling Nonferrous Metals, Jiangxi Copper, Yanggu Xiangguang and other smelters recovered about 200 kg/year of platinum from copper anode sludge, and on the whole, there was little structural change in the production of platinum-end minerals. China is highly dependent on the import of platinum, with South Africa as the main importer. According to customs data, China imported 71.4 tons of platinum in 2019 and consumed about 72 tons, with import dependence reaching 99.3%. In 2019, South Africa imported 39.9 tons of platinum, accounting for about 55.9% of the total imports. Followed by Japan, accounting for 16.0%; The remaining importers include Russia and other European countries such as Germany, the UK and Switzerland.