The Slow Evolution of China's Coal Behemoth

China's Sichuan Coal Group, a provincial state-owned enterprise, is just one in a sea of small to middling Chinese coal businesses on the perpetual verge of bankruptcy. The company announced July 27 that it had completed a nearly 1.06 billion-yuan ($159.5 million) bond payment that it had missed in June, a rare piece of positive news from an industry battered by sluggish demand, low coal prices and the central government's increasingly stringent attempts to cut excess capacity. But Sichuan Coal's payment, which averted a bond default, hardly augurs an upswing for the industry that has powered China for a century and that still supplies 64 percent of the country's energy mix today....