Abstract: The new Mineral Resources Law has further deepened the market-oriented reform process of the mineral resources legal system and laid the institutional foundation for the high-quality development of China’s mining industry. As the core concept of Mineral Resources Law, the connotation and extension of exploration right are obviously changed by the changes of legal provisions, market environment and social relations. This paper summarizes the evolution of “exploration right” and “exploration” in mineral resources law, and finds that the exploration right is divided into broad sense and narrow sense because of the different meanings of “exploration” in the definition of “behavior pattern + behavior object + right”. On the basis of semantic and system analysis, from a comprehensive perspective of economy, science and technology and administration, this paper analyzes the exploration right of onshore solid mineral and defines it as: the owner of the prospecting right shall, for the purpose of making profits, search for solid natural enrichments （solid mineral resources） formed by geological processes and possessing useful value in the exploration areas approved for registration according to law, and ascertain their spatial distribution, form, occurrence, quantity, quality and conditions of exploitation and utilization through general survey, detailed examination and techniques at different stages of exploration. The right to explore mineral resources through activities to evaluate the value of their industrial use. On this basis, it finds that under the background of the reform of exploration right from “agreement delegation system” to “competition acquisition system”, learning from foreign legislative experience, exploring and constructing a graded grant and transfer mechanism of solid mineral exploration right based on three stages （i.e., survey, detailed survey and exploration） can improve the efficiency of resource allocation, and it is helpful to realize the unification of economic transfer and circulation of exploration right, promoting the efficient transformation of scientific and technological achievements and the feasibility of administration according to law of exploration right under the new Mineral Resources Law system.