IT TAKES half an hour to walk down 1,400 rickety wooden steps from a pithead of Jinhuagong mine to the coal face, 400 metres below. At the top, grimy miners tramp home. At the bottom stand a theodolite, a flame-proof telephone and a double-drum electrical traction shearer—a behemoth of a machine designed to chew up the coal face and excrete its fragments onto a conveyor belt.
But the pithead, in the northern province of Shanxi near its coal capital, Datong, is not operational. It was closed in 2012 and converted into a tourist attraction (with a theme: “the glory of Datong coal”). Perhaps put off by the trek, on most days visitors are rare. The mine’s state-owned operator, Datong Coal Mining Group, is trying to revive its fortunes by diversifying into tourism. It is not proving easy. Its fumbled attempts to reinvent itself symbolise the problems Shanxi as a whole is facing.
As China slows, many economists pin their hopes for continued growth on poorer inland provinces. By taking advantage of cheap labour and land, the theory goes, these places should be able to grow more quickly than richer coastal areas. Shanxi, 250 miles (400km) east...Continue reading
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