China orders crackdown on rush for rare white jade

BEIJING (Reuters) - Authorities in northwestern China have ordered a crackdown on private mining of a precious jade whose soaring value in local markets has lured thousands of people to a remote river to extract it.

The value of white Hotan jade, a rare nephrite jade found in alluvial deposits along the Yurungkax river in the Xinjiang region and prized in China for centuries, has exploded in recent years, fuelled by speculators and its increasing scarcity.

Trading at about 40 times the value of gold, the jade had drawn about 100,000 people and thousands of earth-moving vehicles to the Yurungkax, the Beijing News reported on Tuesday, citing an investigative report on state-run China Central Television.

The gold-rush had impoverished many villagers who had formed collectives and spent vast sums in unsuccessful attempts to find the jade, the paper said.

"They had already spent a long time digging but had not found any jade, and the significant expenses for earth-moving equipment and workers were proving difficult to bear," it said, citing local villagers.

The paper showed photographs of bulldozers dredging at the foot of towering slag-heaps and car-parks jammed with rows of earth-moving vehicles.

The situation had prompted authorities to issue a notice to "clean up" the phenomenon, and slap fines of up to 10,000 yuan ($1,300) on private prospectors who ignored orders to withdraw from the river.

But due to the large river area and widely-scattered nature of the jade deposits, the clean-up would be "difficult," the paper said, citing an local official.

"After it is put in order, we will do our best to implement legal and orderly extraction," the paper quoted Zhang Shaolong, a Hotan district official as saying.

($1=7.473 Yuan)