China has discovered the world’s largest treasure trove: the biggest gold deposit on the planet has been unveiled.

A "supergiant" deposit of high-quality gold ore has been discovered in China, located near existing gold mines in the country, reports LiveScience.

Employees of the Hunan Province Geological Bureau (GBHP) announced that they found a new deposit at the Wangu gold mine in northeastern Hunan Province. Chinese workers discovered over 40 gold veins containing approximately 300 tons of gold, lying at a depth of 2,000 meters.

Additionally, a 3D model indicated that up to 1,000 tons of gold may lie at depths of up to 3,000 meters, which is roughly eight times heavier than the Statue of Liberty in New York.

If this preliminary analysis is confirmed, the entire deposit could yield around 600 billion yuan or 83 billion dollars for China.

According to Chinese officials, the maximum quality of the discovered deposit is 138 grams of gold per metric ton of ore. Such figures are quite high compared to other deposits around the world.

"Many of the drilled rock cores contained visible gold particles," says Chen Julin, a mineral exploration expert from GBHP.

An even greater amount of gold was found during drilling around the "peripheral zones" of the new site. This suggests that larger deposits may be discovered in the future at this location.

Currently, it's challenging to determine how much gold is being mined at various mines worldwide, as extraction rates fluctuate and reporting is not always transparent. However, as of 2022, the largest known gold reserves on the planet were located at the South Deep gold mine in South Africa, which has about 930 tons of gold, according to Mining Technology. This indicates that the new deposit could become the largest on Earth.

News of the discovery of such a treasure trove has already caused a stir in the mining sector and the global economy as a whole. Consequently, the price of gold surged to 95,240 dollars per kilogram.

Moreover, China is already the largest gold producer in the world, accounting for about 10% of global production. However, even now, the country uses significantly more gold than it can produce on its own. Thus, China is heavily reliant on imports of the precious metal from Australia and South Africa.

The newly discovered "supergiant" deposit may slightly improve the situation for China, but it will not resolve the issue. The current consumption rates in the country indicate that the entire deposit could only meet China's gold needs for 1.4 years.

Recall that the discovered deposit of a very rare gas turned out to be the largest in history. Scientists conducted exploration and found that helium reserves in Minnesota are more "staggering" than previously believed.