China is one of the earliest countries in the world to invent and utilize glass. According to research conducted by the Chinese Academy of Building Materials and other institutions on unearthed cultural relics such as the glass walls of the Warring States period, China had already manufactured glass products as early as the 3rd century BC. The production of flat glass in China was founded in 1904. During the Qing Dynasty, Lin Songtang, Xu Dinglin, Gu Enyuan, and others established factories in Wuchang, Hubei, Suqian, Jiangsu, and Boshan, Shandong, using manual blowing and spreading to produce flat glass. In 1909, Boshan Glass Factory produced over 4200 weight boxes of flat glass. As a symbol of modern glass industry production, the use of slot vertical upward method to produce flat glass began with the establishment of Qinhuangdao Yaohua Glass Factory in 1924, with an annual production of 127000 weight boxes. Over the next 20 years, the production and operation of Chinese flat glass was mainly controlled by foreigners, and the development of the flat glass industry was slow. Until 1949, there were only three flat glass factories in China, namely Qinhuangdao Yaohua, Dalian, and Shenyang, with an annual output of 910000 weight boxes.
China's glass siliceous raw material mining industry developed on a large scale with the development of the flat glass industry after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Before 1949, daily glass factories in various regions purchased small-scale raw materials from nearby sources. The siliceous raw materials used by the three flat glass factories were all imported from Southeast Asia or the Korean Peninsula. After 1949, the flat glass factory conducted simple geological work and mining on nearby quartz sandstone (quartzite) mines such as Jiguanshan and Xiaopingdingshan in Benxi, Qinhuangdao, and began to use siliceous raw materials on a large scale. In the early 1950s, the geological team of the building materials system began to carry out formal and systematic geological work on glass siliceous raw material mines. The first to explore were the Fangshan Quartz Rock Mine in Mianchi, Henan and the Leizipai Quartz Sandstone Mine in Xiangtan, Hunan. Fangshan Mine was built in 1958 as the first glass siliceous raw material mine in China with an annual output of 300000 tons of ore, serving as the raw material base for Luoyang Glass Factory.
For over 40 years, the country has invested a large amount of geological exploration work in the production of glassy siliceous raw materials. The geological team of building materials, geological and mining systems, closely combined with the needs of the development of the glass industry, conducts comprehensive exploration of quartz sandstone ore, quartz rock ore, quartz quartz quartz ore, and quartz sand ore, and develops siliceous raw material minerals through multiple channels. A large number of mineral producing areas have been identified and explored, and many mines have been successively exploited and utilized. The "one factory, one mine", "one mine, multiple factories" or "one factory, multiple mines" approach provides the raw materials required for glass factories, meeting the needs of the rapid development of China's glass industry in the past 40 years. There are also a number of backup mines available for future construction and selection.
The abundant mineral resources have provided favorable conditions for the vigorous development of China's glass industry in the past 40 years. From 1949 to the present, China's flat glass industry has undergone fundamental changes due to the continuous technological transformation of enterprises, the completion and operation of a large number of basic construction projects, and the continuous expansion of production scale. Its development characteristics are as follows: the development is mainly based on float technology, with various forming processes such as float, vertical pull-up, flat drawing, and rolling coexisting. The product quality varies, meeting the requirements of