LONDON (ResourceInvestor.com) -- China is already the most important market in the world for most of the products of the global mining industry, and it may yet become the most important source of capital for the sector as well.

The highly successful initial public offering (IPO) last week of Western Mining, a Chinese lead and zinc producer, could be the start of a trend. Western Mining shares rose 144% to RMB 32.84 on their debut, valuing the company at RMB 78 billion ($10.3 billion).

Western Mining’s IPO raised the equivalent of $816 million, and comes hot on the heels of a forecast published earlier this month by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the global professional services firm, that capital raised by A-share listings in Shanghai and Shenzhen, where China’s two major stock markets are located, would total RMB 400 billion ($52.6 billion) this year.

Under the Chinese stock market system, A-shares are quoted in renminbi, whereas there are also B-shares quoted in dollars. But A-shares are by far and away the more significant category in terms of value of shares in issue, number of listings and trading turnover.

PwC’s number is up from a forecast of RMB 200 billion in January, and by comparison, IPOs last year in Hong Kong totalled $41 billion in terms of capital raised, London $39 billion and New York $29 billion.

While last year Shanghai and Shenzhen were closed to new listings until June pending market reforms, there is no such impediment this year, and if the PwC forecast is anything to go by, listing activity seems to be increasing exponentially.

So given that China is already looking likely to become the largest market for IPOs in general, how likely is it to follow suit for mining in particular?

One the one hand, it seems natural for the most significant consumers of a given raw material to be the most significant investors in its production, but on the other, the accumulated mining knowledge and enthusiasm in the U.S., British, Canadian and Australian markets will take some beating.

It also remains to be seen whether Chinese investors will have much appetite for foreign run mining companies, or whether they will be as happy investing at the junior end of the mining industry as investors in the West.

There is already the example of Hong Kong and Sydney-listed Sino Gold [HKE:1862; ASX:SGX], which is run by Australians and enthusiastically followed in Hong Kong, but then again Hong Kong is a somewhat different kettle of fish and a market that is feeling the heat of competition from Shanghai and Shenzhen as much as any other.

However it would be a brave man who contends that London, New York, Toronto and Sydney have nothing to fear. In fact, my money says that it won’t be long before firms like Kazakhmys [LSE:>KAZ], the Kazakh copper miner that listed in London in 2005, head to mainland China when the time comes to consider an IPO.

Kazakhmys could have had more or less had its pick of stock markets, and at the time, London was evidently the most appealing choice. But that is no longer the state of play, and now that Western Mining has demonstrated that the Chinese mainland is prepared to put money behind mining IPOs, other companies will be looking to tread the same path.