Miners walk out of a mine after work in Tangshan city, North China's Heibei province in the 1980s. Their salaries were the highest among workers in heavy industries at that time. [Photo/news.qq.com]
Coal has been front and center of the economic development of China as well as the pollution issues it now faces.In the last thirty years, conditions for Chinese miners have greatly improved, from work safety, working conditions to leisure, as younger, better-educated miners enter the mines.