China has ordered scores of state-owned coal mines to stay open through the Lunar New Year holidays to ease a crunch in supplies that has been exacerbated by the worst winter weather in half a century. Swathes of southern and central China have been blacked out for days after heavy snow and ice storms left transport links at a standstill.
"This year, because of the bad weather in southern and eastern China, we have demanded and advised some of the major state-owned coal mines to maintain their production," Zhi Tongxiang, an official at the State Administration of Work Safety, told a news conference on Saturday.
Mines normally stop production for up to three days over the New Year for maintenance work and to allow miners to go home for the holiday, but this year that would be cut back to one day, Zhi said.