A Shanxi-based IT company got its start by helping to modernize the province's accident-plagued coal industry. Now it's eyeing bigger things, reports Li Yang in Taiyuan.

When Li Wei set off for the United States to study, he probably never thought he'd eventually find his future in the dirty and dangerous coal mines of Shanxi province.

After finishing college in China in 1994, he headed to the US. There, he went to graduate school, became a market strategist and met Taiwan-born Calvin Teng, who would become his business partner.

Li was looking for something different to do with his life. He decided that there was a market in using technology to clean up the coal industry in Shanxi province.

With Teng and several other partners, Li formed a smart equipment production company in Taiyuan in 2003. That enterprise was RocKontrol Industry Co Ltd.

Li is now board chairman of RocKontrol, the domestic leader in the nascent field of the Internet of Things.

Rather than linking sources and users of information, as the Internet does, the Internet of Things is a network of physical objects, also linked by the Internet.

A single "chain" in the IOT consists of sensor chips, radio-frequency identification or other transmission channels, a computing center and an interface (in most cases, software).

The software can achieve remote control of the sensor chips in physical objects-a car, for instance, or a monitor in a tunnel, irrigation equipment on a farm or any one of hundreds of other items.

The expansion of the Internet and cloud computing in China are lifting the IOT to the next level in the nation. "The growth of cloud computing ability makes the IOT commercially viable," Teng said.

The IOT connects the information of "everything" for calculation, analysis and application. It requires so much data-processing capacity that it's almost impossible to achieve without cloud computing.

"The real significance of the cloud is that it lets people share limited resources," said Teng.

IOT systems have to handle tens of thousands of sets of heterogeneous data, which is derived from all sorts of equipment based on different standards.

"Portal agreements and computing methods are the core technologies for IOT enterprises," said Li.

Top 10 world's most admired companies

Top 10 most valuable Chinese brands