Our Views: West Virginia Does Know Coal Collaboration With The Chinese Would Be A Sympathetic Situation
CHINA, the world's largest coal producer, has much in common with West Virginia, one of the United States' most experienced underground coal producers.
A relationship between the two would certainly be a sympathetic and symbiotic one.
West Virginians have both a long and painful history of mining disasters and family tragedies, and a history of continually improving mine safety.
China has a huge problem with mine safety.
Gov. Joe Manchin, who knows the coal business firsthand, has just returned from a 10-day mission to China. As he told Daily Mail Business Editor George Hohmann, West Virginia businesses may be able to help the Chinese with mine safety.
The Chinese say their fatality rate per million tons of coal in 2005 was 70 times that of the United States.
In 2000, there were 66 coal mining deaths in the United States. China, by comparison, lost 5,300 miners that year. In the week ending Oct. 28 alone, 41 Chinese miners died or were missing underground.
Small, illegal producers are part of the problem, and the Chinese counterpart to the Mine Safety and Health Administration in the United States - the State Administration of Work Safety - has accelerated its program to close such mines. More than 9,000 have been closed in two years, and another 1,000 will be out of business by the end of the year.
But better equipment is part of the answer as well, and West Virginians know a good deal about mining equipment and mine safety.
A number of high-level representatives of West Virginia coal mining and mining equipment companies accompanied Manchin on the trip, and the potential for synergy is obvious.
"I see opportunities for technical manufacturing - what's going to be needed for them to keep this {Chinese} economy going," Manchin told Hohmann.
The state has an opportunity to boost exports of roof-bolting equipment and continuous miners, which would clearly help workers in both nations.
Manchin said the Chinese mine 2.3 billion tons of coal a year.
"With that market growing, it's going to be necessary for them to grow," he told Hohmann. "There are going to be a lot of opportunities for ancillary jobs for us."
The Chinese are probably unaware that news of their mining tragedies are followed by ordinary West Virginians, who have kept their own vigils and swallowed their own heartbreaks over many decades.
These two entities on the opposite sides of the world would work well together on what, despite all differences, is a common problem.