Scramble for Coal Continues in China

At the mouth of one of China’s largest coal mines, miners in hard hats waited to begin another shift deep underground. Lunch break was over. Their faces were smeared with black soot as a dingy, white truck carried them down an underground road to the floor of the mine.

"We’re working pretty much all the time," a man with a small lamp hooked around his neck said before he climbed onto the truck and disappeared into the dark tunnel of the Ta Shan Mine.

In China, Thursday marked the Lunar New Year and ushered in the Year of the Rat. For Chinese families, especially those of migrant workers, the holiday offers an annual opportunity to reunite. Yet for miners here in coal country, Thursday was just another workday. Vacations have been canceled. China is too desperate for coal to allow them a single day off.

This new year will always be remembered in China as the Year of the Storm. Freak snow and ice storms left millions of people without power in southern China, stranded millions of migrant workers trying to get home and exposed the fragility of the country’s transportation system and power grid.

The crisis is abating, but the storm underscored China’s heavy dependence on coal and laid bare the inadequacy of its system of producing, pricing and distributing coal to power plants. China is an engine of the world’s economy that is fueled by coal, which accounts for 80 percent of its electricity. For now, China has shown itself to be one unexpected major storm away from major problems.

"What this storm has exposed is that coal is the backbone of China’s energy supply and the market is currently tightly balanced," said Zhang Chi, a director at the Beijing office of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "Any disruption may have serious impacts on the economy and on people’s daily lives."

Faced with electricity shortages in more than half the country, the Communist Party responded with an old-style mobilization campaign. Approximately two million military personnel were mobilized to provide relief aid, help restore power and get trains moving again.

Last week, President Hu Jintao visited the Ta Shan Mine and ordered all state-owned mines to produce more coal, and produce it faster, in order to guarantee supply for power plants in the south. China’s central-planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, stated that certain previously closed mines would be allowed to reopen to help meet demand.

But the short-term emphasis on production glossed over the complexity of the coal situation and raised questions about whether the government was signaling that unsafe mines could be reopened. China has the world’s most dangerous mines, and the government has closed thousands of small ones since 2006 in an effort to reduce fatalities by consolidating the industry into more efficient operations.

Last year, the number of mining fatalities dropped by one-fifth to 3,786 deaths, still the highest figure in the world. This week, officials in Beijing insisted that the government’s new announcements were not a retreat from its safety priorities. But the Chinese news media quickly found operators of closed mines who were recruiting workers and trying to reopen.

Meanwhile, 21 miners died in two separate accidents last week, an ominous omen for an industry suddenly operating at full throttle.

For decades, Datong has been one of China’s busiest coal capitals, and it is known for producing higher quality coal used to fire power plants.

The region is dominated by Datong Coal Mining Group, one of the China’s largest state-owned mining companies, with more than 200,000 employees. In his visit, Hu descended to the floor of the Ta Shan Mine and exhorted miners to dig out of patriotic duty.

"Datong Coal Group takes action to realize the spirit of Chairman Hu’s directive," declared a front-page article in the state-run Datong Daily newspaper. The article described a production campaign with miners waging war in "an underground battlefield."

More prosaically, Hu’s directive has meant that the state-owned mines are working overtime. At one of Datong Coal Group’s other main mines, the regular quota is 150,000 tons of coal a month, according to one worker. But officials are now asking workers to quadruple that figure to 600,000 tons for February.

"We’ll do it," said Wang Kuikui, 53, who has worked in the mine for 27 years. "We’ll get 600,000 tons."

Wang usually gets three days off for the Lunar New Year, but his leave was canceled. He earns about $200 a month and lives near the mine in a two-room home of mud and brick with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and grandson.

And he is considered more fortunate because he has a job at a larger, safer state-owned operation. His son cannot get a job at the same mine and makes money doing odd jobs.

At the Hudong Freight Yard, the tracks are jammed with trains transporting 200 or more coal cars eastward to the port city of Qinhuangdao. From there, the coal is loaded onto ships and taken to power stations in the south.

"My holiday is canceled," said a railroad repairman named Cheng, who is living at the freight yard instead of returning home to his family. "We’re working here straight through for the next two weeks. However much coal they can produce, we’ll find a way to move it."

Hu’s directive focused exclusively on the large state-owned mines around Datong and elsewhere in Shanxi Province. Yet from one hilltop near Datong, the view of the bleak, pocked landscape also shows smaller operations tucked into ravines and gullies. Some of these mines lack required approvals but are protected by local officials in exchange for a financial stake.

This year, Shanxi Province is trying to carry out central government policies and close all small mines that produce less than 90,000 tons of coal a year.

But it is unclear if plans to close mines that produce less than 300,000 tons will go forward in light of the shortages.

A Chinese journalist who focuses on mining estimated that there are thousands of illegal mines operating in Shanxi Province, despite central government edicts. Often, these mines enable the country to meet rising demand for coal as the economy continues to grow at double-digit rates. But while the largest mines use sophisticated mechanized diggers, some small mines use mules to haul coal underground.

On the same day that Hu visited the Ta Shan Mine, Li Shuangwei was discharged from a small hospital that treats injured miners. Li, 26, had worked in four small mines since October 2006, earning about $10 a day.

With both his parents dead, Li chose mining because it paid more than construction work. He said he needed money to help his brother pay for medical treatment for seizures.

On Jan. 17, Li was knocked unconscious when a poorly supported ceiling in the mine collapsed on him. He awoke to find himself being dragged out of the mine atop a mechanized rickshaw and then carried to the hospital.

"My stomach hurt," he recalled. "I couldn’t breathe. I was bleeding inside my chest."

Li now has a 25-centimeter, or 10-inch, scar on his stomach from surgery at the hospital. He still does not know what procedures were performed on him or what specific injuries he had. His foreman arrived at the hospital on Jan. 31, paid the bill for the two-week stay and told Li that he must cover any further medical costs.

"I just want to get better," said Li, who is now living on a construction site where his uncle is the foreman as he tries to get more medical compensation money from the local government. "I can’t do any work now."

Li’s accident would be considered a minor one. Another man in his mine lost an arm a few weeks earlier. Major accidents claiming lives often prompt officials to close all surrounding small mines and conduct inspections.

At the Mawushan Mine near Datong, 41 workers were saved after being trapped in an underground flooding accident on Dec. 24. Mawushan is a midsize mine connected to the Datong government, and a watchman said it would reopen in March.

Zhang, the energy analyst, said there was a clear correlation between small mines and accidents, but he also noted that planners might have underestimated the role of small mines in market supply. China is going to need more and more coal in the future, even as it tries to replace smaller, more dangerous mines with larger ones.

Experts say production is only one of the uncertainties. Electricity rationing is under way in several provinces because of shortages of coal reserves at power stations. Reserves were already at historical lows before the storm knocked out rail and truck deliveries.

At the Ta Shan Mine, the complexities of China’s coal situation were distant problems.

"It’s just like a normal day," one man said before he climbed onto the shuttle truck. "We go down. Then we come back up and go home."