Once the beating heart of China’s industrial growth, the northern Chinese city of Datong in Shanxi Province—long known as the nation’s coal capital—stands at a crossroads of economic and energy transition. As China pivots sharply toward renewable energy, which met nearly all of the country’s growing electricity demand in 2025, former coal heartland communities are grappling with the messy, uneven process of reinventing their local economies. For one retired miner, the shift has opened a surprising new door, but for many others, uncertainty and barriers to new opportunity remain the norm.
Yang Haiming, who hung up his mining gear at age 60 when he retired from Datong’s No. 9 Mine, rejected the idea of stepping away from work entirely. Decades ago, when Yang was an active miner, the state-owned coal enterprise built an entire worker village right alongside the No. 9 shaft: a self-contained community complete with a primary school, childcare center, sports facility, and an elevated rail line that carried extracted coal out to power cities across the country. In those peak years, the village hummed with activity; thousands of workers and their families packed its streets, especially during holiday celebrations. Today, that era feels like a distant memory.
Most of the No. 9 Mine has been converted into Jinhuagong National Mine Park, a public museum that preserves China’s industrial mining heritage for visitors. The village’s school stands shuttered, its gates locked, and most of the low-rise apartment blocks once filled with mining families are only partially occupied—many now home to new residents drawn by cheap housing, not active mining work. Yang, who stayed in the region after retirement, has carved out a new niche serving the booming tourism trade near the Yungang Grottoes, the world-famous 6th-century Buddhist cave site that draws millions of annual visitors. He now owns and operates a local restaurant specializing in grilled lamb skewers, and in good months, he earns more than he did during his final years working in the mine.
Yang’s successful career pivot, however, makes him an outlier among the generations of Shanxi workers who built their lives around coal. The province’s footprint in global coal production is staggering: if Shanxi were an independent nation, it would rank as the world’s largest coal producer. In 2025 alone, its roughly 800,000 active miners extracted 1.3 billion tons of coal—nearly one-third of China’s total national output. Millions more Shanxi residents hold jobs indirectly tied to the coal industry, from logistics and transportation to local service businesses. As the energy transition progresses, supporting these workers through the shift is widely recognized as a critical priority; experts warn that leaving coal communities behind risks widespread economic hardship and social instability.
For many working and retired miners, the barrier to entering new industries like tourism is too high to overcome. Thirty-six-year-old active miner Zhou Hongfei told reporters he has considered switching to tourism work to support his wife and 8-year-old daughter, but hesitates to take the risk. “To really be able to make contact with and then switch into a new industry is very hard, and the truth is, I don’t dare,” he explained. “If you leave this industry, you don’t know if it’ll work out. Can I adapt? And what if this ends up being a burden for my family?”
Tom Wang, a Shanxi native, environmental activist, and founder of People of Asia for Climate Solutions, notes that most long-time coal miners lack the specialized skills needed to secure stable work in new sectors. “There are many who don’t know what to do, who say they don’t have the right skill sets for anyone else. All they know is to be a coal miner, or the easiest fallback option is for them to go back to farming,” Wang said. Even miners who stay in the industry face uncertainty: many of Datong’s oldest mines are nearing the end of their operational lifespans, and workers who are reassigned often face longer commutes and lower wages at new, more distant sites. One active miner, who requested anonymity out of concern for professional repercussions, has taken a second job driving for a ride-hailing service, working five extra hours a day after his mining shift to make ends meet. He questioned whether ordinary workers will ever get to share in the benefits of Datong’s tourism boom. “This tourism industry, how do I get in there? For Datong, those who can enjoy the benefits of this tourism boom, it’s mostly the big hotels and maybe some restaurants, noodle shops, but what do you think regular people can get?” he asked.
Shanxi’s provincial government has pursued a range of alternative economic development strategies, from investing in coal-to-hydrogen projects to promoting local specialty agricultural products. But the province’s most high-profile and successful effort to build a post-coal economy centers on expanding cultural tourism, particularly around the Yungang Grottoes. Visitor numbers to the site have surged in recent years, jumping from 3 million in 2023 to 4.5 million in 2024, after the blockbuster Chinese video game *Black Myth: Wukong* featured the grottoes and nearby regional sites, drawing legions of new tourists to the area. Local tour guide Yan Jiali said the tourism boom has sparked widespread interest in licensed guide jobs, even among older residents: “Even my mom’s friends would come ask me about taking this test,” she said. Hang Kan, director of the Yungang Research Institute and a National People’s Congress representative, has pushed to accelerate tourism development, framing the sector as a future “strategic pillar” that will boost living standards for Shanxi residents.
Even as the transition away from coal accelerates, few analysts expect Shanxi—or China—to abandon coal entirely. Recent global events, including the ongoing Iran war, have underscored the vulnerability of global energy supply chains to disruption, and experts widely view coal as a critical safety net for China’s energy security. Analysts at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) note that the Chinese government recently walked back plans to cap national coal consumption, declining to implement a hard limit. “The confidence hasn’t grown to the point where they can entirely depend on renewable energy,” explained CREA analyst Qi Qin. In fact, China continued rapid expansion of coal-fired power generation in 2025, bringing 78 gigawatts of new capacity online—more than the total coal power India built over an entire decade. Still, Wang holds out hope that China’s push to expand high-tech industries could bring new, stable jobs to Shanxi, which powered the nation’s rise to become a global economic powerhouse. “What if DeepSeek comes over to Shanxi and says, OK, we will start a data center here? What if Baidu comes over to Shanxi?” he asked, referencing leading Chinese technology firms.
For retired miners like Yang, who has found success in the new tourism economy, the shift comes with a touch of nostalgia. When recalling the crowded, bustling streets of the old mining village during its peak years, he noted, “It was crowded everywhere. Now the bustling scenes have gone, and so has the feeling.” That tension—between the promise of a cleaner, more sustainable future and the uncertainty of transition for working people—defines this new chapter for China’s former coal capital.