Structural Settings and Kimberlite-Diamond Potential of the Northern (Soviet) East-Chinese Province

The diamondiferous kimberlites of Eastern China and North Korea are confined to the NE tectonic activation trend regarded as the eastern border of the East-Chinese Rift System. The latter, in its turn, serves as the western border of the Peripacific marginal platform basin. The northern elongation of the East-Chinese Rift System traced on the Soviet Territory, including the Amur, Khabarovsk and Primorsky districts, is regarded as the Blagovetshchensk and Khanka-Korean activation trends. The productive kimberlites in China are confined to the intersections underlain by stable Precambrian cratons (in fare coincidence with Clifford’s rule). Hence, promising prospecting areas in the Soviet Far East are picked on the basis of tectonic analyses, providing for the Bureya Precambrian massive Belogorsk, Arkhara, Khingang, Bira, Khabarovsk, Badzhal cratons and the Nakhimov Craton in the Khanka Precambrian massive. The western part of the Blagoveshchensk trend and the eastern part of the Khanka-Korean trend were covered by radar mapping and subsequent morphostructural analyses of the images resulted in an array of forecasted kimberlite fields which are regarded as prior prospecting targets. According to Clifford’s rule, productive kimberlites are supposed only in the Yaurin predicted field, located in the Khingang craton.