Jinchuan children move on as state enterprises change

JINCHANG (Reuters) - When China's largest nickel miner welcomed the Beijing Olympics this week, it mobilized thousands of children in a mass ceremony of precision and pride.

Olympic mascots roller bladed, teenage boys dribbled basketballs in a hip-hop routine, and hundreds of costumed, rouged children twirled, hula-hooped and danced for an hour-long ceremony while over 2,000 classmates in the stands waved pom-poms and fans. Firework fountains capped the finale.

The display in the new high school gym showed off China's new generation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), flush with money and reforming leaders, but it also marked the end of an era.

While their parents all work for Jinchuan Mining Group, most of the children will not.

"Even though China is my second mother, I really want to study abroad and expand my horizons," said Wang Anqi, a 12-year old in pigtails who emceed the ceremony with the poise and mannerisms of a China Central Television host.

Jinchuan Mining is the classic SOE. Founded on top of a nickel deposit in the Gobi desert in 1958 during the Great Leap Forward, by the 1980s its workers in neat brick housing were plagued with lung disease from the black smoke of the smelter.

Although the SOEs traditionally provided cradle-to-grave employment, Jinchuan is turning to highly trained outsiders while prepping its own children to move elsewhere when they graduate.

"Now we hire nationwide to bring in people with the correct skills. We are reforming to become a top-quality enterprise," said publicity manager Tao Weidong.

As nickel prices soared with China's commodity boom, Jinchuan's chief executive Li Yongjun, a stooped Sichuanese, plowed the money into upgrading the smelters and refineries. Jinchuan has also bought into overseas nickel miners to ensure its survival when its own copper-nickel deposit runs out.

Jinchuan has its own hospital, several schools, its own television station and newspaper. Its 50,000 workers, retirees and children make up one-quarter of the city of Jinchang, which has no reason for existing other then the mine and the plants.

Fumes from the smelter sting eyes and throats, but locals say the air quality has improved noticeably in the last year alone.

"My parents worked for Jinchuan and I was born here so I stayed. Our kids will stay too unless they can get out," said one mother, who described her 11-year-old son as an average student.

Li, who is also Communist Party secretary of Jinchang, has directed the building of new parks and hired English teachers so the schools can offer English from first grade, two years earlier than the Chinese norm.

"There's a lot of pressure on these students, because their parents are all workers. They want most of the students to get into college," said English teacher Wang Zhiyong.

Once they do get into college, most of the children have their sights set on the bright lights of China's big cities, rather than a lifetime of evenings by the man-made lake in the city's new park.

"Actually sometimes it's too organized here. People don't have the passion to do things on their own so they look forward to organized activities," said Wanda Zhao, a high schooler whose English level has already surpassed her teacher. She wants to study economics in Beijing.

"There's not much entertainment here."

(Editing by Jerry Norton)