A view of Datong [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The 2021 Shanxi Road Cycling Championships recently ended in Zuoyun county, Datong. 

The continued improvement of the Loess Plateau ecology and the rich cultural atmosphere in the northernmost city of North China's Shanxi province have resulted in a large number of athletes and tourists participating in the annual event. 

Indeed, this is an example of the transformation and green development of Datong, which is known as the "coal capital" of China. 

To change its single industrial structure and dirty urban environment caused by long-term dependence on the coal industry, Datong has continuously adjusted its ecological and urban layouts. 

Hao Rui, director of the Datong bureau of the environment, said that through years of afforestation, water treatment, and air quality improvement, Datong now has an annual average of more than 300 days with excellent air quality, and has become a "Top 10 Ecological Civilized City in China" and a "Beautiful City in China."

Chinadata Group's data center in Lingqiu county, Datong city [Photo/Datong Daily]

The city has also formed a modern industrial system feautring equipment manufacturing, modern medicine, and cultural tourism as pillar industries, with six emerging industries such as general aviation, big data, and new materials as a future focus, according to Wang Mingsheng, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Datong Municipal People's Congress. 

In the first half of this year, the eight major scenic areas in Datong received more than 2 million visits by domestic tourists, around 90 percent of that in the same period in 2019. In the several years before 2019, the cultural tourism industry in the city grew at an average annual rate of 20 percent. 

The city has built or is building around 800,000 servers for data centers, including a batch of data centers by internet industrial leaders such as Huawei and Chinadata.

In addition, Datong has been building six new energy industry clusters focusing sectors such as wind power and photovoltaic power.

The installed capacity of new energy in Datong sits at nearly 6.3 million kilowatts, accounting for nearly half of the city's total installed power capacity and nearly 20 percent of the total installed capacity of new energy in Shanxi.