The Coal Transition in Datong
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CHINA COLUMNS One of Tongmei’s historical mines. Datong, February The Coal 2016. PC: Judith Audin. Transition in Datong An Ethnographic Perspective Judith AUDIN The city of Datong, Shanxi province, has long been Coal is the only sector we are good at. known as the ‘coal capital’ of China. Through Here in Shanxi, the transition will be an ethnographic approach based on long-term difficult, and it will take time too. observation and in-depth interviews conducted Interview with a Tongmei employee, over several years, this essay examines how the Datong, 1 June 2016 restructuring of the local coal industry in the Building a new Tongmei, inventing a new reform era has impacted the living and working life. Tongmei slogan, April 2016 conditions of the miners in the area. he coal industry represents a key sector for China’s national Teconomy and employment, and it is the country’s main source of energy. Coal 34 MADE IN CHINA / 1, 2020 CHINA COLUMNS extraction has fuelled China’s industrialisation in remote locations, the coal industry sustains and urbanisation throughout the twentieth specific, territorialised communities and social and twenty-first century, especially after the groups, and is at the core of local politico- liberalisation of coal production in 1979. In the economic systems in ‘resource peripheries’ reform era, the coal industry rapidly moved (Hayter, Barnes, and Bradshaw 2003). towards the market economy, oscillating along Moreover, coal production, as a destructive boom-and-bust cycles. After 2001, when China industry, affects, undermines, and damages not joined the World Trade Organisation, the only the environment through air pollution and new orientation towards a ‘socialist market land and water degradation, but also the people economy’ driven by foreign direct investment living in such places due to deadly accidents, triggered faster economic growth and rising respiratory diseases, and birth defects. living standards, as well as rising demand for This essay aims to contribute to the sociology coal production. Research in environmental of coal mining in China by studying the social studies, geography, and political economy has dimension of such profound restructuring in documented how the coal industry developed the city of Datong, an important coal cluster in China (Rui 2003; Wright 2012; Ho and in the Jinbei (晋北) coal field. The article is Yang 2019). Since the mid 2000s, and more based on long-term observation and in-depth importantly since 2013, the coal sector has been interviews conducted in Datong from October restructured at the national level, following 2015 until June 2019. Overall, this ethnographic a new geography of production, and new approach ‘from below’ allows us to better measures aimed at ‘de-capacity’ (去产能) in the understand the work and living conditions of context of the promotion of new energies, as coal miners, going beyond a simple image of well as plans for ‘low-carbon’ and ‘sustainable’ hard labour and damaged landscapes. development of ‘resource-based cities’ (资源性 城市) (State Council 2013; Woodworth 2015). While labour sociologists have extensively Spatialities of Coal documented two ideal-types of the Chinese working class—laid-off workers in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Northeast China and Coal is embedded in temporalities—growth migrant workers in the ‘world factory’ (Lee in boom and bust cycles—and in spatialities— 2007)—workers and communities of the Chinese the ‘spatial system of the mine’ (Baudelle coal industry have been overlooked. This lack 1994). Coal communities are closely connected of attention is unwarranted considering how to their territories of production, which are the industry of coal extraction not only shapes historically situated. Within the coal sector, territories, but also communities of workers my field research confirms that there are whose livelihoods rely heavily on ‘black significant fractures in the identities of miners, gold’ (乌金). Understanding coal contexts in between private and state-owned mines, contemporary China through an ethnographic between official employees (职工) and part- lens illuminates the complexity of coal reform time employees (临时工), as well as between by examining embedded social processes. local and migrant workers. There are also The underpinning idea is that coal, as a differences in terms of systems of production— material, generates particular economies and shaft mines, which is conducted through the infrastructures of extraction. It interacts with excavation of a vertical or near-vertical tunnel different scales of political power, producing from the top down, and open-cast mines specific histories, geographies, economies, and where coal is extracted from an open pit—and social and political systems that span from the coal regions, from Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, local to international levels (Mitchell 2011). and Shaanxi to Sichuan, Jiangxi, Anhui, or Because the material is extracted in situ, often Heilongjiang. By favouring selected coal MADE IN CHINA / 1, 2020 35 CHINA COLUMNS regions along the Inner Mongolia–Shanxi– The landscapes of Shanxi province, with the Shaanxi axis while excluding others, the dry, yellow land of the Loess plateau, contrast current politics of the coal sector also greatly with the rain-filled holes of Anhui. affects the workers’ futures, shaping fulfilled Shanxi has been one of the core territories and unfulfilled expectations (Ferguson 1999; for coal production in China since the onset of Woodworth 2015). Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms. To this day, The sensorial experiences of coal miners Shanxi and Inner Mongolia remain the largest also depend on the local landscapes. For coal producers in China. At the same time, the instance, Zhang Keliang, a miner-poet industry has left deep ‘scars’ on both people from Anhui province, described coal and places in the province, producing labour mining in his hometown in these words: victims as well as ‘environmental refugees’ (生 态难民) (Zhang 2013). In 2015, the coal-mining The sacrificed earth has exposed its hollow industry employed a significant proportion of core the working population in the province, with Masses of land cave in constantly Datong, nicknamed China’s ‘coal capital’ (煤 Creating a time-transcending hole 都), holding a symbolic position as a ‘resource- Leaving behind a bottomless pit of rain based city’ relying on a single industry. Like a limpid teardrop, big enough to fill Datong’s mining district is located 12.5 the most bitter sea kilometres southwest of the city centre. Quietly washing away the dirt and Densely-urbanised areas established along desolation of this world. the coal railway give way to smaller villages (From the poem ‘Sinkholes Lakes’, see spread along a river that has almost dried out, video in Yu, Chen, and Lau 2018) on sandy land and hills. At the centre of the mining district, Datong Coal Mine Group— The topography of coal in Shanxi shows hereafter Tongmei, the SOE that replaced profound differences with Anhui, as described, the original Mining Bureau established in for instance, in this collection of stories about 1949—stands out as an important landmark one of Datong’s early mines, Xinzhouyao (忻州 for the city, both symbolically and physically. 窑): While specialising in coal mining and power, more recently Tongmei has begun dabbling Xinzhouyao is the entrance gate on the in renewable energy, real estate, and cultural western side of Datong. Two mountains tourism. As we will see, along with the oppose each other, forming a small Datong city government, the company has excavation in the middle. Without the been exerting a strong influence on the local high-rise pit derrick and vehicles moving territory and economy. across, it would resemble one of the most common geological landscapes in northern Shanxi: on one side, there is an Temporalities of Coal accumulation of yellow earth piled up for thousands of years; on the other, a mountain cliff stands tall; unknown wild Roger Thompson highlights the specific grass grows over the mountain edge, and historical trajectory of coal in Shanxi, the wild wind continuously blows from all starting from the early report of geologist directions. (Zhou, Wen, and Tao 2009, 1, and geographer Baron Richthofen, who translated by the author) wrote in 1870 that Shanxi ‘is one of the most remarkable coal and iron regions in the world’, and continuing to the early twentieth century, when Shanxi’s coal became a symbol of local, 36 MADE IN CHINA / 1, 2020 CHINA COLUMNS provincial, and national unity (Thompson 流). Because of the uncertainty of the policies 2011, 1262). In terms of production, unlike related to coal mines during the Mao era, mine northeastern provinces such as Liaoning, operators seized on this opportunity, as they Shanxi was not historically at the core of the were not convinced it would last (Zhao and Xu coal industry in China in the early twentieth 2012, 21). This initiated the diversification of century (Wright 1984, 86–91), but rather local mines. At the end of 1990, 287 ‘local’ coal developed rapidly in the 1930s. From 1937, mines were reported in Datong, classified in under the Japanese military occupation, Datong no less than nine different categories (Datong turned into a new centre of coal production. Statistical Yearbook 1991, 156). According to In national history, the local coal industry is sociological research and to my interviews with associated with forced labour and local Chinese local farmers, the coal production in Shanxi miners are looked upon as martyrs and heroes disrupted and dominated the land originally of the resistance. In one of Datong’s earliest used for agricultural purposes (Zhang 2013). mines, Meiyukou (煤峪口), the memorial of In 1997, the Asian financial crisis resulted the ‘hole of the ten thousand people’ (万人坑) in a five-year slowdown of the coal economy commemorates this history of mass graves. The and led the national authorities to launch a Jinhuagong Coal Mine Museum (晋华宫国家 new policy to ‘close the illegal and irrationally- 矿山公园) also celebrates local resistance, for distributed coal mines’ (关闭非法和布局不合 instance by commemorating a strike that took 理煤矿) (State Council 1998).