Word: mined
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...forehead and lightly powdering the insides of his ears. Last May Zhao and a team of other veterans were assigned to search for the bodies of 57 miners killed in Zuoyun County, deep in China's Shanxi province. The dead men had accidentally tunneled into a flooded mine shaft next to their own. "Many of them are very young--just boys," Zhao says, pausing to light a cigarette. "I keep seeing their faces in my dreams, and they remind me of my son. He's 27 and works at a mine in the next county...
...years, Zhao has worked as a miner in China's northeast, where much of the coal that drives the country's booming economy is mined. That longevity makes him a lucky man. Being a coal miner in China is one of the world's most dangerous jobs. Officially, about 5,000 of his fellow workers died in mining accidents last year. Unofficially, nobody knows how many were killed. In the space of a single week late last year, gas explosions and accidents in four mines left nearly 100 miners dead. Li Yizhong, head of the State Administration of Work Safety...
SEPA, admittedly, is not a full-fledged ministry. The drive to improve safety in coal mines, by contrast, has had backing from the very top for years. In 2003 Premier Wen Jiabao celebrated the Chinese New Year by eating dumplings with miners 2,300 feet underground. When he visited their homes and families, Wen called for improvements in mine safety. Wen has stayed involved in the issue, regularly expressing concern for miners and their families and once tearfully instructing officials to learn "lessons drawn in blood." Indeed, within days of the Zuoyun accident, the Premier met with rescuers and called...
According to accounts in the state-controlled media, such small mines, which account for a third of China's total coal output, are commonly subcontracted by local governments to individuals. With some 17,000 of these small mines now operating (as well as thousands of illegal mines), supervision by government authorities is virtually nonexistent. To maximize profits, mine owners ramp up production far above sanctioned levels, exceed the regulated number of miners and neglect safety equipment and procedures. Mine owners often bribe local officials into turning a blind eye to their practices and have been known to ship corpses...
...accident at Zuoyun, where Old Zhao recovered the bodies of dead miners, sums up everything that is wrong with China's mining sector. Media reports in the wake of the disaster put production from the mine, licensed to produce only 90,000 tons a year, at roughly four times that amount. And according to accounts in China's state-owned media, which gave the accident widespread coverage--another sign of Beijing's concern--the mine operators broke numerous other safety regulations, including the number of miners allowed in the mine and the depth at which they worked. But the principal...