Chinese Mining Research Articles

Does state ownership really matter? The dynamic alignment of China's resource environment and firm internationalization strategies

Abstract Recent research suggests that unequal access to home country institutional resources affects firm internationalization strategies. We add to this debate, based on an analysis of state-owned (SOEs) and non-state-owned (NSOEs) Chinese mining firms, by developing a more dynamic and multi-layered understanding of this interplay. We find that home institutional support can be ownership-based or performance-based, whereby the former benefits SOEs and the latter favors high-performing NSOEs. Combined, these support structures serve as institutional control mechanisms in promoting competition, performance and loyalty to national policies. In addition, they establish a permanent link between firm- and home country-specific assets and incentivize firms to develop dynamic resource access capabilities at home and abroad. Our findings inform our understanding of the firms-institutions nexus and Chinese foreign direct investment dynamics, especially in industries of strategic importance to the state.

Flexible Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from A Chinese Company in Africa

In the emergent field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) studies, there has been growing interest in understanding and practice in particular sociocultural contexts in developing countries. As a rising force of overseas investment, Chinese enterprises are increasingly encountering local challenges stemming from CSR. This paper is an ethnographic study of a Chinese gold mining company in contemporary Ghana in regard to CSR knowledge and practice. It investigates how multiple actors negotiate understandings of CSR in a Chinese gold mining company as compared with an American gold mining company. The research was conducted near the mining sites located in Odumase of Eastern region and Juaso of Ashanti region of Ghana during 2016. Its CSR practice was compared with that of the Akyem mining site operated by an American mining corporation. Through ethnographic fieldwork, this paper contextualizes the construction of diverse understandings of CSR among multiple actors in this Chinese investment project. It also demonstrates how both formal and informal engagements with affected communities constitute its CSR practice. Based on a case study and comparison with an American mining company, this paper finds that large-scale Chinese mining operation in Africa is receptive of the concept of CSR but its practice is very unique.

Recovering rare earths from fertilizer waste

Rare-earth elements are widely used in technology applications such as electronic devices and strong magnets. Chinese mines supply more than 80% of the critical minerals, so other countries are keen to develop domestic sources. Richard E. Riman of Rutgers University and colleagues have now shown that rare earths can be extracted from phosphogypsum, a calcium sulfate waste product of fertilizer manufacturing (J. Chem. Thermodynamics 2019, DOI: 10.1016/j.jct.2018.12.034). An estimated 100,000 metric tons of rare earths—equivalent to about three-quarters of the world’s current production—are consigned to this waste stream every year. Riman’s team prepared phosphogypsum samples and spiked them with six different rare earths, then tested four acids for their ability to extract the metals. Sulfuric acid was the most effective, teasing out 77–94% of the rare earths at pH 0.7. The team also saw promising results from a mixture of gluconic acid and other organic compounds produced by the bacterium

At Africa’s expense? Disaggregating the employment effects of Chinese mining operations in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract China’s increasing investments in African countries have attracted considerable media attention and are the subject of scholarly debate. However, the socioeconomic impacts of China’s presence in Africa remain poorly understood. While some case studies maintain that Chinese projects have an enclave character and have largely failed to promote economic spillovers and local employment, others claim that Chinese activities have in fact encouraged infrastructural development and local economic activity. Focusing on the labor market effects of foreign mining investments in Africa, this article examines whether Chinese-controlled companies generate fewer local jobs compared to non-Chinese mining operations. Theoretically, we argue that—due to a competitive advantage in the employment of expatriate workers and a lower readiness to invest in local skill formation—Chinese firms are less likely to foster regional employment. Relying on novel data on the control-rights regimes of diamond, gold, and copper mines and georeferenced information from Afrobarometer surveys, we test the effect of mining contractors’ nationality on local employment rates. Our individual-level logistic models show that respondents living close to Chinese mining areas are more likely to report being unemployed compared to individuals living in the vicinity of non-Chinese mining operations. Times-series cross-sectional estimations employing district-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys for 20 sub-Saharan countries over the period 1997–2015 corroborate these findings. Furthermore, we find evidence that negative perceptions of China among indigenous populations are largely driven by the belief that Chinese workers are crowding out local employment.

Does State Ownership Really Matter? The Dynamic Alignment of China’s Resource Environment and Firm Internationalization Strategies

Recent research suggests that unequal access to home country institutional resources affects firm internationalization strategies. We add to this debate, based on an analysis of state-owned (SOEs) and non-state-owned (NSOEs) Chinese mining firms, by developing a more dynamic and multi-layered understanding of this interplay. We find that home institutional support can be ownership-based or performance-based, whereby the former benefits SOEs and the latter favors high-performing NSOEs. Combined, these support structures serve as institutional control mechanisms in promoting competition, performance and loyalty to national policies. In addition, they establish a permanent link between firm- and home country-specific assets and incentivize firms to develop dynamic resource access capabilities at home and abroad. Our findings inform our understanding of the firms-institutions nexus and Chinese foreign direct investment dynamics, especially in industries of strategic importance to the state.

The Last Copper Century: Southwest China and the Coin Economy (1705–1808)

Abstract Over the last millennium, the priority for imperial China’s parallel bimetallic monetary system shifted from copper cash to silver bullion, a development that gained momentum with the influx of New World silver during the sixteenth century. This trend was altered when the Qing government increased copper production in the Southwest, thus inaugurating China’s last copper century around 1705. This study focuses on those provinces where the wealth of China’s copper economy was created: Yunnan, where copper for the metropolitan mints in Beijing was mined under relatively strict governmental control; and especially Sichuan, which maintained China’s largest provincial mint and favored a more flexible cooperation between state and private structures. In these provinces, the interrelations between mining and minting can be observed most closely, the copper century lasted longer and showed a deeper impact, and the symptoms of its final crisis, like counterfeiting or coin debasement, became most apparent. This study aims to reassess our understanding of Chinese mint-metal mining and copper-coin production in practice and theory. It shows the importance of the internal market in huge land empires like China but also—through its interrelation with silver in the bimetallic system—its deep involvement in an increasingly integrated global economy.

Institutional change and divergent economic resilience: Path development of two resource-depleted cities in China

Existing literature on the economic resilience of cities has primarily focused on the study of capabilities and outcomes, while little has been conducted on the evolutionary processes. Drawing upon institutional change and path development concepts, this article develops an analytical framework that explains how different modes of institutional change shape path development processes in relation to economic resilience in cities. This article provides a comparative study on the divergent path development involving distinctive institutional change mechanisms in two Chinese mining cities both facing resource depletion since 2000, namely Zaozhuang in Shandong province and Fuxin in Liaoning province. It shows that Zaozhuang enables endogenously-based layering and conversion that leads to path renewal and creation with a more dynamic resilience engendering structural change, whereas Fuxin is trapped in exogenously-induced institutional thickening that results in path persistence and extension with a less dynamic resilience hindering economic renewal. The findings of this study advance the regional resilience literature by incorporating the role of agency, institutional change and path development in the context of China.

Green total factor productivity of Chinese mining industries considering negative intergenerational and environmental externalities

Green total factor productivity of Chinese mining industries considering negative intergenerational and environmental externalities

Evaluation on community development programs in mining industry: A case study of small and medium enterprise in China

Corporate-community relations(CCR) has been regarded as one of the top issues for the mining industry, however, it seems that China's mining industry gives little attention to the needs of the local community. Limited by their size, SMEs (Small and medium enterprises) in China are unable to undertake too many community development (CD) programs. As an SME, Dongxin copper iron (gold) mine of Huaibei Dongxin Mining Co. Ltd. is the only known mine which has established a corporate–community foundation in the Chinese mining sector. From the perspective of community development and with an intensive study of the foundation, this paper probes into the practical effects of the foundation operation, based on which a new framework of evaluating the of CD programs is developed.

Pollution Processes in Chinese Mining Area from Isotope Evidence

Pollution Processes in Chinese Mining Area from Isotope Evidence

Determinants of Corporate Environmental and Social Disclosures in China: A Comparative Study within High-profile Industries

This study examines the extent of environmental and social disclosures in annual reports made by Chinese mining, utility and chemical industries. It also investigates the key drivers of the companies’ environmental and social disclosures (CESD), thereby determining the motivations of the sample organisations towards corporate environmental and social responsibility. The study adopted dichotomous index to measure the extent of CESD among the three industries in their annual reports. Additionally, Ordinary Least Square was adopted to examine the determinants of CESD. By drawing on legitimacy theory, the results depict positive associations between the extent of CESD and firm size, profitability, and firm age. Engagement from industry association showed strong significance in environmental disclosure, whereas leverage was significant in social disclosures. Government ownership was found insignificant in the analysis. The study contributes with direct evidence to the extent of environmental disclosure and social disclosure made by three high-profile industries based on G3. The results showed that overall there is no significant difference between the extents of CESD of the three industries, indicating that high-profile industries behave similarly in terms of the content of information in disclosure. This study has also practical implications particularly for the regulatory body and the industry association when developing regulations and guidelines on environmental and social reports.

At Africa's Expense? Disaggregating the Social Impact of Chinese Mining Operations

Qualitative studies and media reports suggest that the presence of Chinese oil or mining companies generates resentments among local extractive communities due to low wages, poor working conditions, environmental degradation, the employment of foreign labour, and perceived racial discrimination. At the same time, Chinese investment in the extractive sector appears to enhance local infrastructure. So far, these claims have not been empirically tested in a systematic way. Relying on novel data on the control-rights regimes of diamond, gold, and copper mines and geo-referenced information from Afrobarometer surveys, this paper examines whether Chinese-controlled mining promotes anti-Chinese sentiments among the local populations of sub-Saharan African countries. In addition, we test the effect of mining contractors’ nationality on socio-economic indicators such as local employment rates and infrastructure levels. Our logistic regression analysis for the period 1997–2014 reveals that the effect of Chinese mining companies on African local development is ambiguous: while proximity to Chinese-operated mines is associated with anti-Chinese sentiments and unemployment, populations living close to Chinese mining areas enjoy better infrastructure, such as paved roads or piped water. Multilevel mixed-effects estimations using district-level data from the Demographic Health Survey for 20 sub-Saharan countries corroborate these findings.

Does subclassified industrial land have a characteristic impact on land surface temperatures? Evidence for and implications of coal and steel processing industries in a Chinese mining city

The heat effects of industrialization pose challenges to national governments and scientists. Current studies largely conclude that the heat storage capacity of an urban surface creates hotter spots in man-made areas than in surrounding areas. Taking a Chinese mining city as a study case, our study further separates industrial land from these man-made areas and classifies it into two subtypes of coal and steel processing industrial land to reveal varying corresponding effects on land surface temperatures (LSTs). Three indicators (AREA, PERIM and SHAPE) that characterize the production scale of industrial enterprises are employed to simulate LST responses to internal and external characteristics of subclassified industrial patches. It is shown that industrial land plays a dominant role in generating high and extremely high LSTs, and that these two industries have different impacts on LSTs. Moreover, the responding areas of coal and steel processing industrial patches are 10 ha and 40 ha, respectively, and an increase of 1 ha in patch area generates a rise in the LST of 0.50 °C and 0.18 °C, respectively. Around the industrial patches, the AREA and SHAPE of an industrial patch significantly impact changes in LSTs in greenspaces surrounding coal and steel processing sites, respectively. For the coal processing industry, an increase in patch area expands the responding range (130 m/10 ha); for the other industry, an increase in the interacted patch area and perimeter expands the responding range (175 m/0.5 unit SHAPE). Our study furthers governmental and academic understanding of the impacts of industrial land on LSTs, and provides government officials, planners, conservationists, etc. with an explorative study case. Especially for industrial cities with coal and steel production activities serving as economic pillars, this study offers effective theoretical and practical guidance on rational industrial restructuring and land allocation.

Promises of hope or threats of domination: Chinese mining in Greenland

Chinese investment plans in Greenland have been viewed by various Greenlandic governments with high hopes while their Danish counterparts have been much more reluctant and fearful of what some sort of orchestrated Chinese intervention would mean for the autonomous and supposedly less experienced part of the Danish Kingdom. Despite expectations, actual Chinese actions have not materialized in any of the ways that Greenland and Denmark have hoped or feared which could suggest that China’s interest in Greenland was not as once thought. This article discusses the strategic implications of mining in Greenland, questioning the assumed coherence of Chinese interests and also examining both Greenland’s and Denmark’s role in staging strategic narratives. The article argues that while it is possible to identify Chinese state actors that believe Greenland should be highly prioritized, their approach so far has been very fragmented. In fact, the idea of a co-ordinated Chinese approach appears to have mainly been created in the contestation between Greenlandic hopes and Danish fears.

Fractural structure of thick hard roof stratum using long beam theory and numerical modeling

The thick hard rock (THR) roof of the long-wall mining face is prone to the large-sized cantilever roof, and its sudden fracture will cause serious rock dynamic disasters, such as coal and gas outburst and rockburst. In this study, based on the long beam theory, the initial fracture mechanical model for THR was established, and the first weighting characteristics and extreme fracture step distance were calculated. This study introduced a new technology called deep-hole pre-splitting blasting (DPB) which could break the THR by drilling holes with different depths and angles at different levels of roof rock and then blasting it. Field measurement analysis indicated that the immediate roof and lower thick hard strata were fully collapsed to fill the goaf, and the upper thick hard stratum was effectively cut off. The results showed that mechanical model and drilling holes method and DPB technique were so notably that would lead to a foundation for large-scale popularization and application in a Chinese Mine.

Effect of Forced Relocation on Household Income and Consumption Patterns: Evidence from the Aynak Copper Mine Project in Afghanistan

In 2011, the government of Afghanistan and a Chinese mining company relocated an entire village near the Aynak copper mine, where they developed a mining site. This paper investigates the impact of this displacement on affected households’ income and consumption patterns using a difference-in-differences approach and primary household-level data from the villages around the mine in two periods: one just before relocation in 2011 and another in 2015. In 2011, all households of the Wali Kali village, one of the seven project-affected villages, were involuntarily relocated. Project-affected families (PAFs) claim that their traditional earning sources have been inadequately replaced by mine-related earnings and that, being separated geographically, they now face difficulty maintaining social networks that are necessary for their survival. Once lost, rebuilding social networks is not easy in war-trampled Afghanistan. This paper clarifies these shadowy effects of forced relocation and demonstrates that traditional daily labour income was reduced significantly and only partially replaced by income from mine-related activities among those who were relocated and that relocation significantly discouraged the participation in community life, reflecting the losses of social capital among the PAFs due to separation.

Exploring adaptation and adaptability in uneven economic resilience: a tale of two Chinese mining regions

The aim of this article is to provide a better understanding of long-term uneven resilience by critically exploring the notions of adaptation and adaptability. Moving beyond the conventional trade-off assumption, the article proposes three main types of adaptation–adaptability relationships: Competing, Separated and Reciprocal, as an analytical approach to explain uneven regional resilience. Two empirical case studies of municipal-level mining regions with a common crisis of coal exhaustion in China, namely Zaozhuang and Fuxin, show how variations of adaptation–adaptability relationships result in uneven resilience.

A review on the mechanism, risk evaluation, and prevention of coal spontaneous combustion in China.

In recent years, the ecology, security, and sustainable development of modern mines have become the theme of coal mine development worldwide. However, spontaneous combustion of coal under conditions of oxygen supply and automatic exothermic heating during coal mining lead to coalfield fires. Coal spontaneous combustion (CSC) causes huge economic losses and casualties, with the toxic and harmful gases produced during coal combustion not only polluting the working environment, but also causing great damage to the ecological environment. China is the world's largest coal producer and consumer; however, coal production in Chinese mines is seriously threatened by the CSC risk. Because deep underground mining methods are commonly adopted in Chinese coal mines, coupling disasters are frequent in these mines with the coalfield fires becoming increasingly serious. Therefore, in this study, we analyzed the development mechanism of CSC. The CSC risk assessment was performed from the aspects of prediction, detection, and determination of the "dangerous area" in a coal mine (i.e., the area most susceptible to fire hazards). A new geophysical method for CSC determination is proposed and analyzed. Furthermore, the main methods for CSC fire prevention and control and their advantages and disadvantages are analyzed. To eventually construct CSC prevention and control integration system, future developmental direction of CSC was given from five aspects. Our results can present a reference for the development of CSC fire prevention and control technology and promote the protection of ecological environment in China.

South–South relations under world market capitalism: the state and the elusive promise of national development in the China–Ecuador resource-development nexus

ABSTRACTOptimistic commentators welcome ‘the rise of the South’ as a phenomenon that will transform geopolitical architectures and development thought. This essay situates this alleged rise and ‘South–South relations’ within world market capitalism and discusses their liberating potential with a case study of Chinese mining investment in Ecuador. Despite the ostensibly differing approaches to development embodied in the Chinese and Ecuadorian alternatives to neoliberalism, the Mirador project reveals eerily familiar outcomes, dominated by visions of national modernization and business-state alliances that reproduce market inequalities and postcolonial exclusions. While the Mirador project grants significant economic clout to pursue development through redistributive means, it also attests to the role of the state in opening new market frontiers and securing conditions for transnational capital accumulation. I argue that in this context and similar ones, it is problematic to project the attributes of the South as a symbol of struggle for emancipation on to the nation-state. Although the South remains a useful concept, it should be understood as a space made up by those who are subject to diverse forms of oppression in the name of globalization and national development – a space that is reshaped by the works of the state in multiple and often contradictory ways.

Shear deformation of fold structures in coal measure strata and coal-gas outbursts: Constraint and mechanism

The coal measure strata formed in the late Paleozoic era underwent tectonic movements on several occasions, leading to the development of a range of fold structures in the strata as a result of highly interlayered gliding and shearing deformation. In addition, brittle ductile tectonic coals were widely distributed in the reservoir, constituting one of the primary causes of coal-gas outbursts in Chinese mines. This indicates a strong connection between shear deformation and such outbursts. In this study, structural geology, gas geology, and rock mechanics are all taken into consideration to investigate the controlling effects of the fold structure formation process on coal thickness and tectonic coal formation. Numerical simulation, based on the stress test data, was deployed to identify the stress distribution law adjacent to fold structures under the modern stress field. Additionally, the mechanical mechanism underpinning coal-gas outbursts near the fold structure was determined by making a comparison with the distribution law relating to such outbursts. The results demonstrate that the formation and evolution of the fold structure not only form the material basis of outbursts but also control their power source. During the fold formation process, interbed sliding and shearing between strong and weak rock strata were caused by differences in the mechanical properties of the coal bed and rock layer, resulting not only in a change to the local thickness of the coal seam but also in its deformation and structural alteration. Interbed shearing and local stress concentration, caused by the coal gangue, led to coal damage and the development of layered tectonic coal of consistent thickness, simultaneously improving its ability to adsorb gas and providing the material basis for coal-gas outbursts. This reduced the seam’s capacity to resist such events. The conditions for these outbursts are created by the sudden desorption of excess gas as a result of formation pressure release during coal mining and the widespread distribution of tectonic coal. Under the modern tectonic stress field, the stress distribution characteristic is controlled by the fold structure shape; and because of the aforementioned differences in the mechanical properties of the coal bed and rock layer, the interlayer deformation is asynchronous. This causes shear stress concentration within a specific range of the anticline’s two wings. This concentration zone happens to be exactly aligned with that of coal-gas outbursts, meaning that shear stress concentration is considered to be both the power source for and main cause of the region’s outbursts.