The performance of the Chinese coal industry in the 20th century is undeniably important given the pivotal role played by coal as a source of energy for Chinese industry and consumers alike until very recently. Was the coal industry a binding constraint on Chinese economic growth across the 1949 divide? And if so, can we identify some form of managerial failure as its root cause?

The answer offered by Tim Wright, in his well-known Coal Mining in China's Economy and Society 1895–1937 (1984), is that the coal shortages did not constrain pre-war economic growth. On the contrary: it was the slow growth of the Chinese economy in aggregate that limited the expansion of the coal industry. The main obstacle to the expansion of coal production was thus to be found on the demand side, and not in entrepreneurial failure or some other supply-side cause. Accepting this (rather Keynesian) conclusion, the question naturally arises as to whether the coal industry fared any better under Mao, and after. In particular, this framework of analysis invites us to consider whether the Maoist regime (and its successors) lifted the demand-side constraint, only to substitute a supply-side constraint in the form of state ownership and management.