China Real Time (Wall Street Journal) recently interviewed Tim Wright to discuss the challenges facing China’s coal industry — from safety to corruption to power shortages — and how long the country can count on its stores of coal to fuel its fast-burning economy.
From The Wall Street Journal China Real Time website:
If you want to understand China’s reform-era growing pains you can do a lot worse than dig into the coal industry. Coal powers China’s industry, pollutes its environment, and is the site of conflict for the state and private entrepreneurs – each eager to monopolize control of a precious resource.
Tim Wright of the University of Sheffield has made the Chinese coal industry the focus for research stretching over the last few decades. Much of that research appears in his new book “The Political Economy of the Chinese Coal Industry: Black Gold and Blood Stained Coal.”
Series: Routledge Studies on the Chinese Economy
Coal mining is one of China’s largest industries, and provides an excellent case study through which to consider the broader issues of China’s transition from socialism to capitalism, focussing on the shift to a market economy, the rise of rural industry and the situation of China’s working class....
Published October 16th 2011 by Routledge
