Abstract: Mineral exploration is an important way to increase the reserves and production of mineral resources, and it is a powerful means to enhance the national strategic mineral reserve guarantee capacity, build a new type of energy system and steadily promote carbon neutrality. Strategic mineral exploration investment is a plan around the overall concept of national security, with the goal of promoting energy transformation, to ensure the supply security of China’s strategic mineral. In this paper, it systematically reviews the evolution of mineral exploration and strategic mineral exploration investment at home and abroad, summarizes the policy experiences of the United States, Australia, Canada and Japan, and puts forward the main problems faced by China. The Difference-in-Difference is used to test the implementation effect of China’s mineral exploration related policy reforms. The results show that: ①the global mineral exploration investment entered a downward cycle in 2012, but the global investment rebounded after 2016, while China continued the downward trend, gradually deviating from the global exploration market trend. ②At present, the scale of China’s mineral exploration investment is lower than the level of developed countries, there are structural risks in the source of funds, and the exploration investment policy system needs to be established and improved. ③The empirical results show that China’s mineral exploration related policy reforms around 2016 have a certain negative impact on domestic mineral exploration investment. Finally, based on the results of the study, this paper puts forward relevant policy recommendations to provide a basis for improving China’s strategic mineral exploration investment strategy.