ABSTRACT
One of the unusual environmental hazards that occurred in northern China during
the 1990s was a series of naturally occurring fires in the coalfields with flames
that spread underground into the coal seams and burned invisibly for many
miles. This phenomenon, attributed to the dry and hot climate, also occurred in
Inner Mongolia and Shanxi but the problem was particularly acute in Xinjiang,
where fires were described as ‘consuming [a] vast area of coal resources’. Fires
had broken out in forty-two out of Xinjiang’s eighty-eight mining areas.1
