Chinese Miners Research Articles

Developing environmental sustainability policy – How financing and subsidies are influencing green innovation in mineral extraction industries in China

Mineral extraction is regarded as a pollution-intensive industry and is confronted with multiple environmental sustainability challenges. This issue poses an existential crisis for mineral extraction due to continued global pressure to adopt more sustainable practices in their functioning. Despite its importance, there is a notable gap in the literature regarding how these companies encounter financial challenges, particularly in the context of high-risk, long development cycles, and the unique double externalities associated with green innovation. This research, leveraging panel data from 2016 to 2023, aims to fill this gap by examining whether Chinese mineral extraction companies demonstrate distinct preferences for specific financing sources and by evaluating the role of government in facilitating their green innovation activities. Our findings indicate that such companies utilize a mix of internal and external financing to support their green innovation projects. It is observed that the influence of external finances channels, namely government subsidies, equity financing and debt financing, on green innovation progressively weakens, a conclusion supported by multiple robustness checks. Furthermore, the study highlights the crucial role of government subsidies in motivating publicly listed companies to enhance their green innovation activities through debt and equity financing, thereby contributing to a more equitable and sustainable development paradigm in the Global South.

The importance of intellectual property: Analyzing the impact of resource efficiency improvements in the mineral sector

This study investigates the relationship between Natural resource efficiency improvements and intellectual property (IP) rights in the Chinese mineral sector from 2010 to 2020. Utilizing a robust econometric model to analyze data over a decade, our research aims to quantify the effects of efficiency improvements on the creation and enforcement of IP rights within this sector. Findings indicate a positive correlation of regions demonstrating significant resource efficiency gains also show enhanced IP rights protection. This suggests that improvements in resource efficiency not only drive innovation in mineral processing technologies but also necessitate stronger IP rights to safeguard these innovations. The study concludes with a policy implication emphasizing the need for integrated strategies that promote both resource efficiency and IP rights protection in the mineral sector, highlighting their mutual reinforcement for sustainable development and innovation. This research offers crucial insights for policymakers and industry stakeholders, advocating for a harmonized approach to fostering innovation and sustainability in China's rapidly evolving mineral industry.

Testibiopalladite, PdSbTe: A Valid Mineral and Sb-Analogue of Michenerite

Abstract Testibiopalladite was reported from two unnamed deposits in China by Anonymous (1974) to be ideally PdSbTe. The description of the mineral included an indexed X-ray powder diffraction pattern, space group determination, electron probe micro-analyses, reflectance, and micro-indentation hardness measurements. This description was published without prior submission to the IMA, which was the norm at the time before China became a member. It is unknown as to why the Commission for New Minerals and Mineral Names (CMNMN) did not examine and vote on the mineral as had been done for all other Chinese mineral descriptions published at the time. It is surprising because the chairman of the CMNMN at the time had reviewed the mineral (Fleischer et al. 1976) and concluded it was a valid species, i.e., the Sb analogue of michenerite (PdBiTe). Further, the same article included a description of “hexastibiopanickelite” which was voted on and rejected by the CMNMN in 1976. From 1981 to 2021 there were many papers published reporting testibiopalladite from several deposits in different countries (e.g., Hudson et al. 1978, Chen et al., 1993, Stepanets et al. 2019, 2020), as well as a single-crystal structure analysis of synthetic PdSbTe which confirmed the assigned space group (Foecker & Jeitschko 2001). The published data (e.g., Barkov et al. 2002, Liang et al. 2019, 2023) suggest that testibiopalladite is a valid mineral species, ideally PdSbTe, and is the Sb analogue of michenerite, PdBiTe, both crystallizing in space group P213. Both the name testibiopalladite and the mineral, ideally PdSbTe, were approved by the Commission of New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification of the International Mineralogical Association (CNMNC-IMA), Nomenclature Voting Proposal 23-H. Liang et al. (2019, 2023) studied samples from the type locality (Yangliuping deposit, PRC) that are to be considered as a neotype.

Predicting coal workers' pneumoconiosis trends: Leveraging historical data with the GARCH model in a Chinese Miner Cohort.

Coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP) is one of the most common and severe occupational diseases worldwide. The main risk factor of CWP is exposure to respirable mine dust. Prediction theory was widely applied in the prediction of the epidemic. Here, it was used to identify the characteristics of CWP today and the incidence trends of CWP in the future. Eight thousand nine hundred twenty-eight coal workers from a state-owned coal mine were included during the observation period from 1963 to 2014. In observations, the dust concentration gradually decreased over time, and the incidence of tunnels and mine, transportation, and assistance workers showed an overall downward trend. We choose a better prediction model by comparing the prediction effect of the Auto Regression Integrate Moving Average model and Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity model. Compared with the Auto Regression Integrate Moving Average model, the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity model has a better prediction effect. Furthermore, the status quo and future trend of coal miners' CWP are still at a high level.

Effects of Mineral Chinese Medicine Chloriti Lapis on Gut Microbiota of Small Intestine in PTZ-kindling Epileptic Rats

Background: Epilepsy is a neurological disease, and its clinical treatment presents a significant medical challenge. Nevertheless, Chloriti Lapis (CL), a traditional Chinese Mineral Medicine, has been employed for centuries to address neurological disorders and has shown notable effectiveness. Objectives: The objectives of this study are to further explore whether CL can modulate the abundance and diversity of the small intestinal flora in rats with epilepsy induced by pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) and to investigate the interrelationship among the flora. Materials and Methods: Operational taxonomic units (OTUs), α diversity, β diversity, hierarchical clustering tree, and principal component analysis (PCA) were utilized to analyze the small intestinal flora of PTZ-kindled epileptic rats. Results: The predominant bacterial groups in the small intestine mainly belonged to the phyla Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, and Bacteroidetes. The administration of CL was found to effectively increase the abundance and diversity of the small intestinal flora, modify its structural composition, reduce the relative abundance of PTZ-elevated microflora, and enhance the abundance of Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, and Gemella Berger. Conclusion: CL exhibits promising potential, reliability, and unique value in managing epilepsy through the regulation of intestinal flora.

At the Roots of Neocolonialism: Forced Labor of the Indentured Chinese Miners in the British Transvaal

The paper deals with the historical use of the Chinese indentured laborers on the gold mines of the Transvaal shortly after the end of the Second Boer war. In the short span of four years some 60 thousand Chinese laborers were imported under 3-year contracts, and then repatriated, after having contributed greatly to the restoration and expansion of the Rand gold mines. By analyzing the legal framework of the process and documented witnesses’ accounts of the “Chinese slavery” in the Transvaal, the author comes to the conclusion that the colonial administration of the Transvaal was ignoring the conventions agreed upon by the British and Chinese side, while the Chinese side did not possess the actual means to enforce the agreements. In the author’s opinion, this can be viewed as the roots of the West’s neocolonial approach to the international relations.

Sanity at the mercy of language: Interpreting the “nonsense” of a Chinese miner in Australia

ABSTRACT Written in an interlanguage of English and Chinese, Jong Ah Siug’s autobiography “The Case” (1872) is rich in ambiguity; this makes it urgently in need of interpretation. Tried unfairly and detained in a lunatic asylum, Jong wrote “The Case” to narrate the cause, process, and aftermath of a fight to prove his innocence, yet unknowingly he introduced another case with the use of highly individualized language: does his “nonsense” imply that he was of unsound mind? This article will analyze “The Case”, first to deduce what Jong’s case really is, what it tells us about Australian colonial culture, and how medical knowledge was powerfully channeled in the colony. Secondly it will examine the case of “The Case”: how the text is accepted by contemporary critics, translators, and psychiatrists, why they are prone to regard the narrator as mad, and what part language plays in the construction of Jong’s insanity.

Chinese mineral question and answering system based on knowledge graph

Mineral knowledge acquisition is indispensable in geological research. Currently, mineral knowledge can be acquired though a search engine like Google, or though some mineral databases. But usually, the answers from the search engines are not professional enough, and the mineral databases cannot answer the questions input in natural language. In this paper, a Chinese mineral question and answering system based on knowledge graph is proposed with the aim of answering the mineral questions in Chinese natural language professionally, accurately and efficiently. Two deep learning models based on BERT are built to obtain mineral entities and relationships to construct the mineral knowledge graph. After the mineral knowledge graph is constructed, accordingly question templates are defined and another deep learning model based on BERT is built to recognize the intent and the entity/attribute of the input question. The query statement is generated according to the question template pre-defined and is input to the mineral knowledge graph constructed. Then the answer to the question is returned by the knowledge graph. The knowledge graph we constructed has 22,568 entities and 91,699 relationships, which is richer than most of the geological knowledge graph. The question and answering system achieve a 91.2% accuracy on the 2,000 test questions.

Assessing the high-quality development strategy of mineral resource enterprises

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the high-quality development (HQD) strategy of Chinese mineral resource enterprises, which is important for Chinese mineral resource enterprises to improve the efficiency and benefit of resource utilization, reduce the intensity of resource and energy consumption and gradually form resource-saving and environment-friendly enterprises. Design/methodology/approach This study establishes an evaluation index system with four dimensions: economy, environment, society and management innovation. The entropy value method assigns weights to them and then uses the system dynamics (SD) model for case simulation. Findings The results of the SD simulation conclude that the fulfillment of social responsibility and the implementation of management innovation can accelerate the realization of HQD of mineral resource enterprises; profitability plays a crucial role in economic indicators; the improvement of energy-saving volume has the most significant impact on environmental benefits; the social contribution is the key element to measure social indicators; and the sales rate of core products has the most significant impact on the benefits of management innovation. Originality/value Based on the few studies on the evaluation of the development strategy of mineral resource enterprises, this study establishes an evaluation index system that considers the interactions between indicators, combines the entropy value method with SD and uses the SD model to comprehensively and systematically analyze the impact and degree of each factor on the HQD of mineral resource enterprises.

How does the transition policy of mineral resource-exhausted cities affect the process of industrial upgrading? New empirical evidence from China

Recognizing the accelerated depletion of mineral resources such as coal, metallurgy, and petroleum in resource-depleted cities is merely a matter of time. Consequently, the industrial restructuring and upgrading of these cities have become a high-priority concern in ensuring sustainable natural resource utilization and environmental sustainability. In this way, this paper is about the mineral resource-exhausted city transition program. It uses China's county and enterprise data from 2004 to 2013 and a staggered difference-in-difference model to figure out how the supportive policy affected industrial upgrading. Our findings indicate that transition policies pose a significant promoting effect on stimulating the industrial upgrading process in Chinese mineral resource-exhausted cities. Specifically, this positive effect is more pronounced in counties characterized by high levels of energy efficiency and environmental performance. Carrying out robustness tests, the preliminary regression results are verified. Heterogeneous influences have been partially established among cities with distinct geographical regions and resource endowment attributes. Further mechanism analysis reveals that heightened cost pressures, incentives for innovation, economic performance attractiveness, and improvements in energy efficiency constitute the primary micro-channels driving industrial upgrading throughout the sample period. This study holds significant global relevance for the sustainable management of natural resources and the sustainable development of mineral resource-exhausted cities in similar emerging economies.

KOLONIALE GEOGRAFIE BEI DÖBLIN: DIE GRÜNDUNG DES BUNDES DER WAHRHAFT SCHWACHEN IM ZEICHEN DER KOHLE IM CHINESISCHEN ROMAN DIE DREI SPRÜNGE DES WANG‐LUN

ABSTRACTThe article examines Döblin's novelistic treatment of geographical information with regard to China. By means of sketches and choice quotations, proof was found that Döblin not only adopted findings by Ferdinand Baron von Richthofen, but implicitly stressed the German geographer's intention to utilise China's large coal deposits for colonial interests. The example of the Nan‐ku mountains, where in the novel the political/religious movement of the ‘Truly Weak’ alliance first formed itself, serves to examine how Döblin makes use of geological and historical facts from von Richthofen's scientific studies. This reveals itself, for instance, in his only slightly differing description of the Nan‐ku mountain range from what von Richthofen had noted. In its attempted exactitude, the former notion can be considered a typical feat of literary Realism. We also further examine the crucial role this much sought‐after Chinese mineral wealth – coal – plays in the later rebellious upheaval. Our results contradict the current notion that Döblin depicted a historically divested, contrapuntal view of China as compared to the Western Hemisphere. Instead, the novel markedly deals with real geographical, social and political facts about China in the colonial era. A merely expressionist view on Döblin's novel does not seem to hold.

Environmental governance, executive incentive, and enterprise performance: Evidence from Chinese mineral enterprises

The goal of China's development by 2035 is the widespread formation of green production and lifestyle. Enterprise is the most crucial micro subject in realizing a fundamental improvement in the ecological environment. However, corporate environmental governance has typical externalities regarding corporate profitability, especially for mining companies. This paper explores the relationship between enterprise environmental governance and enterprise performance from multi-dimensions based on the manually-collected microdata of 194 listed enterprises in the mining industry in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2010 to 2016 (the corporate environmental data is provided up to 2016). This study's findings are as follows. (1) Enterprise environmental governance facilitates short-term enterprise performance, which verifies the “Porter hypothesis.” (2) The five sub-dimensions of enterprise environmental governance have an “enhancing effect” on short-term enterprise performance and a “decreasing effect” on long-term enterprise performance. (3) Moderating effect analysis shows that “executive compensation incentive” leads enterprise environmental governance to improve long- and short-term enterprise performances. In contrast, “equity incentive” inhibits its effect on short-term enterprise performance. (4) Environmental governance in state-owned enterprises significantly contributes to short-term performance. In non-state-owned enterprises, it significantly reduces long-term enterprise performance. Finally, corresponding policy implications and future research directions were recommended. Future initiatives must strengthen incentives for green innovation, accelerate the substitution of new energy sources, promote the green and digital transformation of mining enterprises, and improve carbon finance in the carbon market.

Study on the Influence of Electron Beam Radiation Sterilization Method on Chinese Mural Pigment

Murals are one of the important cultural heritages of mankind. The microbial control of murals is an important subject in mural painting conservation. In recent years, electron beam radiation sterilization has attracted more and more attention in the field of cultural relic protection. Murals are immovable cultural relics, so conventional electron beam irradiation equipment can not be used. However, the development of small mobile electron beam irradiation equipment shows the potential of radiation’s application in the sterilization protection of immovable cultural relics such as murals. A feasibility study of radiation sterilization in mural paintings is needed to investigate the effect of sterilization and the influence of sterilization dose on the stability of mural painting pigments and bonding materials. In this paper, the radiation effects of typical bacteria in tomb murals and mineral pigment powder in ancient Chinese paintings were studied in a laboratory. Firstly, aeromonas hydrophila (Aer.h) and penicillium flavigenum (PNC) were selected as representative strains to determine the appropriate sterilization dose for murals. Then, the effects of radiation on seven kinds of ancient Chinese mineral pigments and white calcium carbonate in the ground layer were verified. The results are as follows: the radiation dose of 10 kGy can effectively remove the two typical strains. This sterilization dose will cause a color difference in calcium carbonate and lead white, while other color pigments are essentially stable. Based on the color difference and UV-vis intensities of the four white carbonate samples, the color change in two of them increased with increasing the dose up to 30 kGy, after which signs of saturation began to appear. X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectra, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectra showed that the chemical structure of the samples did not change after irradiation. The formation of free radicals in treated samples was confirmed using an electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrum test. According to all characterization results, the color difference between the four white carbonate samples may be due to the combination of unpaired electrons and defects in the process of electron beam irradiation to form color centers. After forming the color center, the light absorption of the four samples changed. This is a reversible change, but the samples will take a long time to return to their original state. This study focuses on the influence of electron beam radiation on pigment composition, which is a preliminary exploration of whether radiation sterilization can be applied to the protection of ancient Chinese mural paintings, and the experimental results can provide basic data for later application.

Chinese Miners Under Pressure

Chinese Miners Under Pressure

Review: The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics, by Mae Ngai

“The myriad nations all trade with each other; So how can the Chinese be refused?” (p. 271). Huang Zunxian, the Qing consul general at San Francisco from 1882 through 1885, questioned and bemoaned the unequal commercial and immigration relationships between China and the emergent capitalist Anglo-American world. It is the underlying forces that Mae Ngai’s The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics traces in the domain of what she calls “race and money” (p. 5), where two contradictory tendencies of immigration restriction and capitalist expansion were inextricably linked. In seeking to understand how such a radical idea as Chinese exclusion could turn into widely accepted practices sanctioned by national legislation in the United States and the British settler colonies, Ngai’s book opens up new vistas for transnational histories.Ngai’s use of transnationalism and diaspora as frameworks of analysis brings into focus distinct strands of arguments for Chinese exclusion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book sets out to slay the myth in California that portrayed Chinese gold miners as unfree, slave-like coolies. Ngai contends that Chinese prospectors, as free as miners from elsewhere, conducted diverse mining practices either through partnership and cooperative structures or as wage workers. In Australia, by contrast, concerns about an overrun by heathen Chinese immigrants, due to close proximity to China, became a key motivating factor in Victoria’s anti-Chinese activism. Ngai argues cogently that their racial fear lay in “precisely the fact that Chinese were free migrants” (p. 115), an idea opposite to anticoolieism. Xenophobia and anticoolieism worked in tandem with white labor’s anxiety in the United States, Australia, and South Africa to propel analogous efforts for immigration restrictions.In Ngai’s account, colonial and American anti-Chinese resistance on economic, racial, and moral grounds necessarily entangled with domestic and international politics, underscoring the conflicting interests of imperial and colonial governments as well as the unbalanced relationships between intersecting empires. The Afghan crisis of 1888, which involved Chinese passengers on a Hong Kong–based trading ship, highlights the political dynamics where white Australians’ anxiety over a growing Chinese population collided with London’s trade and political concerns in Asia. It took years before Australian colonial officials could secure the authority to restrict Chinese immigration through local legislation. Alarmed by anti-Chinese discrimination abroad, the decaying Qing Empire struggled to seek diplomatic solutions. Ngai presents two episodes that are less-known than the Burlingame Treaty revisions: an on-site investigation of Chinese immigrants’ conditions in Australia ordered by the Zongli Yamen in 1887 and the intense negotiations by the Chinese ambassador in London with British officials in 1903–1904 to protect the basic rights of incoming Chinese workers in Transvaal, South Africa. Nevertheless, Qing’s downfall could afford little protection for Chinese overseas.To infuse into the book a sense of bitterness at the mistreatment of Chinese overseas and frustration toward Qing’s diplomatic ineptitude, Ngai deftly picks lines from Huang Zunxian’s mournful poem “Expulsion of the Immigrants” as sectional epigraphs. Thirteen chapters in four sections constitute this book, with seven devoted to the comparison of Chinese immigrants in California and Victoria, four to the episode of Chinese indentured mining laborers in Witwatersrand, South Africa, and two toward analyzing the consolidation of Chinese exclusion. The narrative could flow more evenly if Chapter 3 about Chinese miners’ pidgin English, though interesting in itself, were integrated elsewhere.

Chinese mineral named entity recognition based on BERT model

Mineral named entity recognition (MNER) is the extraction for the specific types of entities from unstructured Chinese mineral text, which is a prerequisite for building a mineral knowledge graph. MNER can also provide important data support for the work related to mineral resources. Chinese mineral text has many types of entities, complex semantics, and a large number of rare characters. To extract entities from Chinese mineral literature, this paper proposes an MNER model based on deep learning. To create word embeddings for mineral text, Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) is used. Moreover, the transfer matrix of the Conditional Random Field (CRF) algorithm is combined to improve the accuracy of sequence labeling. Finally, some experiments are conducted on the constructed dataset. The results show that the model can effectively recognize seven mineral entities with an average F1-score of 0.842.

Chinese Mineral Question and Answering System Based on Knowledge Graph

Chinese Mineral Question and Answering System Based on Knowledge Graph

Cold from Gold: Chinese Miners Face New Realities in Ghana

China has maintained strong relationships with many African countries, and Ghana is one such country. While the two countries have normally enjoyed good friendly relations, concerns over the involvement of Chinese citizens in small-scale mining in Ghana threaten the cordial relationship between the two countries. There is evidence of a cultural evolution and a gradual shift from a culture of enthusiastic reception of local people to the Chinese in the area of mining to one of cold reception to Chinese interests in mining communities. There is also evidence that this cold reception to Chinese miners is stimulated by non-state actors led by the media and inspires in Ghana a new paradigm of more rational engagement with China at the political level, although challenges still remain.

Effects of Organic Fertilizer Mixed with Food Waste Dry Powder on the Growth of Chinese Cabbage Seedlings

Food waste is a common global threat to the environment, agriculture, and society. In the present study, we used 30% food waste, mixed with 70% bio-fertilizers, and evaluated their ability to affect the growth of Chinese cabbage. The experiment was conducted using different concentrations of food waste to investigate their effect on Chinese cabbage growth, chlorophyll content, and mineral content. Leaf length, root length, and fresh and dry weight were significantly increased in plants treated with control fertilizer (CF) and fertilizer mixed with food waste (MF). However, high concentrations of food waste decreased the growth and biomass of Chinese cabbage due to salt content. Furthermore, higher chlorophyll content, transpiration efficiency, and photosynthetic rate were observed in CF- and MF-treated plants, while higher chlorophyll fluorescence was observed in the MF × 2 and MF × 6 treatments. Inductively coupled plasm mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) results showed an increase in potassium (K), calcium (Ca), phosphorous (P), and magnesium (Mg) contents in the MF and MF × 2 treatments, while higher sodium (Na) content was observed in the MF × 4 and MF × 6 treatments due to the high salt content found in food waste. The analysis of abscisic acid (ABA) showed that increasing amounts of food waste increase the endogenous ABA content, compromising the survival of plants. In conclusion, optimal amounts of food waste—up to MF and MF × 2—increase plant growth and provide an ecofriendly approach to be employed in the agriculture production system.

Proteomics analysis in the kidney of mice following oral feeding Realgar

Ethnopharmacological relevanceRealgar, a famous traditional Chinese mineral medicine, has been toxic to the renal system. However, the underlying mechanism of Realgar nephrotoxicity is still unclear. Aim of the studyThis study aimed to investigate the potential mechanism of Realgar-induced nephrotoxicity by using a label-free quantitative proteomic method. Materials and methods36 mice were randomly divided into four groups: Control group, 0.5-, 1.0, and 2.0 g/kg Realgar group. After one week, serum biochemical parameters and renal histopathological examination were performed. Label-free quantitative proteomics was used to identify differentially expressed proteins which were subsequently analyzed with bioinformatics methods. Western blot was utilized to verify the six representative protein expressions. ResultsThe results showed that 2.0 g/kg Realgar significantly increased blood urea nitrogen and induced the formation of tube cast of renal tubules, while the lower-dose of 0.5 g/kg and 1.0 g/kg Realgar showed no changes. Label-free proteomic analysis identified 3138 proteins, and 272 of those proteins were screened for significant changes in a dose-dependent manner. Functional enrichment analysis suggested that these proteins could affect the apoptotic process and oxidative stress. Representative proteins in the 2.0 g/kg Realgar group, including Cat, Bad, Cycs, Nqo1, Podxl, and Hmox1, were verified by western blot. ConclusionsThe results in this study suggest that apoptosis and oxidative stress might be related to the Realgar-induced nephrotoxicity in mice. Moreover, the strategy of proteomics could contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms of nephrotoxicity in mice exposed to Realgar.