China has recently discovered a huge gold deposit with a reserve of nearly 50 tonnes, which can be sold for around $3 billion at the current market price.

The deposit is located in rural Rushan City in eastern China's Shandong Province, according to the province's mineral resource authority.

"The deposit covers a large area," said the Shandong Provincial Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources. "The ores are easy to mine and dress."

Shandong Province is rich in gold resources, with a larger production than any other provincial area across China for the past four decades.

"The prospectors drilled more than 250 holes as deep as 1,400 meters to find the deposit," Zhou Mingling, deputy head of the 6th Geological Brigade at the bureau, told local media Dazhong Daily.

A government evaluation found that the deposit can produce 2,000 tonnes of gold ores for at least 20 years.