Shanxi is China's biggest coal producing province, something that has turned many colliery owners into the area's nouveaux riche.

With a taste for high living, including fancy cars and big villas, these bosses seem to represent everything that is good and bad about China's economic development.

It would be easy for most Shanxi coal bosses to buy several houses in one go, said Jin Weidong, who owns a colliery in Xiaoyi, a city in Shanxi. His mine produces 150,000 tons of coal annually.

Even owners of small mines can earn 4-5 million yuan (US$500,000 -625,000) a year. Bosses of bigger mines can earn as much as 100 million yuan (US$12.5 million) a year, he claimed.

Houses are a must-buy for many of them.

"There are two reasons to purchase houses in big cities such as Shanghai and Beijing," said Jin.

"One is to buy as an investment, the other is to seek a better place for our children to be educated."

Once one buys a property in a real estate project, others often follow suit without hesitation, said Jin.

Coal bosses, even though most of them only received a primary or middle school education, have become synonymous with millionaires in Shanxi Province.

Thousands of coal bosses, including those from other regions with large coal deposits, have got on the list of the wealthiest in their hometown.

Of 31 men who qualified to be placed on China's 2005 energy rich list, 11 were engaged in the coal industry, according to Briton Rupert Hoogewerf, who compiled the list.

The richest is Zhang Xinming, chairman of Jinye Coal Group, also in Shanxi Province.
He was seventh on the list, with a personal wealth of an estimated 1 billion yuan (US$125 million), a figure that cannot be verified via income tax bureaux.

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