Fushun

Fushun's West Open Pit Mine is visible from space—a wound in the Earth 6.6 kilometers long, 2.2 kilometers wide, and 420 meters deep. It is Asia's largest open-pit coal mine and among the biggest human-made holes anywhere. For over a century, Fushun existed to fill that hole and extract what was inside.

Japanese forces seized Fushun in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War and immediately began industrial-scale extraction. The South Manchuria Railway Company ran the mines, producing coal that fueled Japan's imperial expansion. After 1949, the People's Republic continued extraction with Soviet technical assistance, and Fushun became one of China's model industrial cities—a showcase of socialist production.

The extraction defined everything: at peak production, Fushun's mines produced over 10 million tons of coal annually and employed the majority of the city's workforce. Oil shale extraction added another dimension—Fushun hosts one of the world's largest oil shale retorting facilities, converting rock into fuel through an energy-intensive process that made economic sense only when the government absorbed the true costs.

Resource depletion hit hard. Coal reserves have declined dramatically, and the open-pit mine is scheduled for eventual closure. Fushun's population has been shrinking—the city lost residents between censuses as young workers migrated to Shenyang, Dalian, and southern manufacturing hubs. The pattern is textbook resource curse: extraction creates wealth, wealth prevents diversification, depletion collapses the economy.

The Chinese government designated Fushun as a resource-depleted city eligible for transition subsidies. Efforts to develop tourism (including a Fushun War Crimes Museum at the site where Japanese war criminals were imprisoned) and light manufacturing have produced modest results.

Fushun's mine is its monument and its grave—a city that dug itself into a hole it may not climb out of.