Unveiling Xinjiang's Energy Heartland: A Journey into China's Coal Chemical Production

As a journalist working for a non-local, non-state media outlet, gaining access to Xinjiang has never been easy, especially when it comes to its energy sector – a reality I began to understand even more deeply during my week there. At the end of April, after several months of trying, I finally secured an invitation to visit a large coal mine to observe its unstaffed mining operations in person and set off for northern Xinjiang. My plan was to use this as a starting point to explore the ecosystem of one of China’s four major bases for modern, large-scale coal chemical production. As the journey continued deeper into this energy heartland on China’s far western edge, a vast and mysterious industrial world gradually began to reveal itself. My first stop, an open-pit coal mine producing more than 20 million tonnes a year, was in northeastern Changji Hui autonomous prefecture, nearly a four-hour drive from Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. By the time I arrived on the first evening, darkness had already fallen. What lay before me was a landscape utterly unlike the city: wild and desolate, with almost nothing across the vast expanse of the Gobi Desert apart from the mine itself.