Twenty-three years ago, there was no city named Shuozhou in China.

In the mid-1980s, former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping met with Armand Hammer, a US industrialist and founder of Occidental Petroleum, and decided to set up one of China's first joint ventures here in North China's Shanxi province.

Since then, the region has been world-known for its coal production, and the joint project, Antaibu, the country's biggest open-pit coal mine, is considered a milestone in China's opening-up.