The golden triangle of Southeast China: another Carlin Trend?

Numerous gold deposits and occurrences in southeast China are located in an area known as the “Golden Triangle,” mainly in Guizhou province (Fig. 1). Comparisons have been made with sedimentary rock-hosted or “Carlin-type” deposits of northeast Nevada (e.g., Li and Peters, 1998), and at least one major multinational mining company has explored for Carlin-type deposits in this area. Such deposits represent attractive mineral exploration targets owing to the size of the contained resources, high grades, and amenability to open-pit mining operations. Furthermore, the deposits tend to occur as clusters (or “trends”). Discovery of a new mineralized cluster would represent a major coup. In this paper I provide a short summary of aspects of the geology of the southwest Chinese deposits and comment on their similarities and differences compared to the deposits of Nevada.