A coal-carrying train in Ordos. /CGTN Photo
Compared to the Yangtze River basin, the Yellow River basin in northern China is often associated with a harsh natural environment and limited resources. However, this excludes the Ordos basin, also known as China's "energy bank for the 21st century."
As the Yellow River flows north from Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, it begins a great bend known as the "Ordos Loop." Since the 1980s, Chinese geologists have continuously reported findings of abundant reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas in the Ordos basin.
It's an area of 370,000 square kilometers that covers Shaanxi, Shanxi, Gansu provinces and Ningxia Hui and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions. The last in particular, has been the nation's top coal producer for a decade.
One of China’s biggest open-pit coal mine, operated by state-owned China Energy, in the Zhungeer Coalfield of Ordos. /CGTN Photo
Coal production, however, does not have a good reputation. With so much of China's smog and over-capacity problems coming from the coal industry in recent years, the country has long faced a coal conundrum.
As the world's biggest producer and consumer of the fossil fuel, China has pledged to slash coal consumption to below 58 percent by 2020 to reduce pollution and carbon emissions, according to the country's 13th Five-Year Plan for the coal industry.
To find out what this structural adjustment means for China's coal-rich areas, CGTN's Xu Mengqi takes us to the Inner Mongolian city of Ordos, for a up-close look at its changing coal industry.