"Global ‘mining mafia’ feeds China’s appetite for gold, investigation shows", The Washington Post, 12 August 2025

[...] China is procuring gold at a voracious pace. This drive has fueled and facilitated a surge in illicit gold mining across the Global South, inflicting a trail of environmental destruction from Indonesia to Ghana to French Guiana [...].

[...] illicit Chinese operators employ crushers, excavators and other tools to extract at a scale that rivals industrial mines. But unlike industrial mines [...] the syndicates operate without regard to environmental, health and safety regulations, degrading forests and rivers [...].

[...] are also driving a transition from using mercury for processing to cyanide — a [...] more hazardous process when employed without strict controls [...].

[...] authorities in at least 15 gold-rich countries have brought cases against Chinese nationals and companies over illicit gold mining since the start of 2024.

In Ghana [...] Chinese syndicates have laid waste to swaths of Ghana’s west and south, and are now moving to the country’s north [...].

In Indonesia [...] officials [...] receive reports almost daily of illegal gold mines [...].

In French Guiana [...] Chinese investors form a ‘crucial logistical chain’ in an illicit gold market [...].

Chinese gold-mining investors began arriving here on Lombok island [...] in 2022 [...].

[...] they came with excavators, crushers and pumps that stunned local miners [...] Soon, Chinese investors were moving quantities of gold in a single day that would take locals months or even years to extract [...].

After several clashes, hostilities boiled over in August 2024 when villagers set a dormitory for Chinese miners on fire. National authorities arrived to find one of the biggest illegal gold mines ever uncovered in Indonesia[...].

[...] Chinese illicit networks spread across Indonesia, corrupting offices from village councils to national ministries, amid a broader expansion in Chinese investment.

The bribing of officials [...] means that even when regulators believe they have found damning evidence, their superiors may not be inclined to prosecute [...].

On Lombok, [...] illegal mine in Sekotong encroached into protected forest area, and operations were carried out by three companies — two led by Chinese nationals and one by Indonesians — none of which had the requisite permits.

[...] hundreds of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo demonstrated against what they called the ‘plundering’ of the country’s gold by Chinese operators.

[...] in the village of Lantung [...] large-scale mining only began three years ago, when a middle-aged Chinese man [...] began striking deals with smallholders to dig on their land.

Runoff from the gaping pits on the mountaintops is killing crops. Every week, it seems, cattle downstream of the mine’s cyanide pools drop dead [...].