To go green, coal city taps tourism, IT

Anybody who lives in northern and central China must have terrible memories of the heavy smog that descended on the major cities there. The Ministry of Environmental Protection warned a total of 23 cities, including Beijing municipality, to issue red alerts on air pollution. Six of those cities are in Henan province.

However, that list does not include Pingdingshan, one of the main coal producing sites in the country, and Henan's biggest coal producer. The air there was never sweet, but it was at least better than the air in red alert areas - and people did not need to wear a face mask all day.

The reason Pingdingshan was left off the list is because, heeding the country's leadership call for overcapacity to be trimmed, Pingdingshan has been optimizing its economic structure by making it greener for years. In the first half year of 2015, its raw coal production was 61.6 million metric tons, 11.6 percent lower than the previous year.