From The Chinese News Monthly, translated by EastSouthWestNorth:
There was a huge mining disaster on August 7 this year in Xingning (Guangdong), with 123 mine workers losing their lives in this tragedy. As time moves on, the mining disaster is fading in people’s minds, but the aftershocks have not ended. In order to keep the positions of the government officials, Qingyuan has adopted the “Four Not To Be Seen” policies pursuant to the decision to leave the coal mining business. This has caused several million people to lose their livelihood and the private mine owners to love their investments.
After the August 7 mining disaster, the Guangdong provincial senior officials were clear and determined with respect to the problem of the coals mines. On August 10, three days after the Xingning mining disaster, the provincial government issued an order for all coal mines to cease operations.
On August 14, the provincial governor Huang Huahua signed the provincial government “2005 No. 27” document to reiterate that all coal mines must cease operations to await inspections as well as demand Shaoguan, Meizhou and Qingyuan must “take sterner measures.” By ‘stern,’ it means that all those mines without permits to operate, or those mines which do not have all three permits and one license (permit to extract coal, permit to produce coal, permit of qualification for the mine director and license to operate), or those mines with high gas content, or those mines with flooding problems will all be shut down.
According to analysts, the provincial government clearly intends to move out in total from the coal mining industry,
which has a yield of only 8 million tons per year.
