Drive to clean up China’s coalmine heartland
As the governor of Shanxi province, China’s coal heartland, Yu Youjun has marshalled an array of unusual weapons to close the unsafe mines that have claimed the lives of tens of thousands of workers in the past decade.
First, he says, the authorities confiscate the excavation equipment of illegal operations, dismiss the workers and explode the mines so that they cannot be reopened.
ADVERTISEMENT
Then, in a tactic worthy of the Cold War, Mr Yu sends light aircraft to fly over the mines to make sure that enterprising locals have not managed to get them operating again.
“To find any illegal mine deep in forests, I send the planes out to photograph them. I am even planning to use satellites to monitor illegal activity,” he said in an interview in Taiyuan, the provincial capital.
Mr Yu’s position in Shanxi puts him in the centre of China’s dirtiest policy conundrum
