Zero to 160 in Seconds

Yet another coal mining disaster in China.


Reuters

Nineteen coal miners are known dead in an apparent methane gas explosion in a Chinese coal mine. Reuters story here.

This begs the question: is this what happens when a country moves from a mostly agrarian and mildly industrial nation to a nation of leviathan manufacturing involvement in less than three decades?

Honestly. It took modern industrial countries almost two centuries to arrive at the levels of industrial throughput witnessed in contemporary China in a period of twenty five years. Remember the steepness of the technical learning curve we had to ascend? The social upheaval from the turmoil between workers and owners? And the monumental environmental dragons we only began to slay in the early nineteen seventies?

Economies of scale in mining rarely apply to the human worker as an increasing headcount increases the risk to all on an exponential basis. As U. S. coal production has increased, the number of miners required per ton mined has fallen dramatically. China and the U.S. have equivalent annual production tonnages yet American coal is produced with 80,000 miners versus China's 3,000,000. Yes, that's three million. Imagine that many poorly trained miners stumbling over one another underground. Losing a miner underground is not a problem under the Chinese conscription system: lose one, ten waiting. It's a miracle that tens of thousands of Chinese miners aren't killed each year.

China's insatiable need to manufacture for the world at all costs may be a unique twist on the Dutch Disease phenomenon and we may all experience some symptoms sooner rather than later.