ABSTRACT
By 1989 China had become the world’s largest coal producer. Production continued to drop steadily throughout Western Europe, Ukraine, Russia, and Japan during the 1980s and 1990s and, indeed, hundreds of mines in these countries were closed down. China’s peak production was 1,374.08 million tons in 1996, compared to the Soviet Union’s 771.78 million tons in 1988, the GDR’s 312.16 in 1985, and Poland’s 206.24 in 1988.1 China’s hard coal production amounted to 37.1 per cent of the world total in 1996, up from 22.1 per cent in 1980.2 In 1998, following the government’s policy to reduce production, it amounted to 33.8 per cent.
