As a native of Lüliang city in Shanxi Province, Ren Yanming is still trying to get used to his new role as the CEO of Shenyang-based Qiushi Media. Established in 2010, the company is about to launch its maiden show - a TV drama called To Strike, which features the transformation of a grass-roots snooker player into the national team coach.

Creative spark

Ren himself has undergone a phenomenal career overhaul. With an initial investment of 50,000 yuan ($7,995), Ren started his business in the coking industry in Shenyang by contracting two railway wagons to transport coke from his hometown in Shanxi province to China's northeast industrial base. Most of the coking materials needed there come from Shanxi, known for its massive coal deposits. In 2011 alone, the output of coal in Shanxi province reached 872 million tons, 25 percent of China's total output of 3.52 billion tons.

Ren soon saw his business booming, thanks to the high profit margins of as much as 50 percent that coal companies frequently enjoy. Even without exploring new markets, Ren's company could easily secure a huge profit of several million yuan a year.

But after running his coal business for nine years, Ren made a bold decision and decided to pursue another career. "Since 2008, the coking industry was in a depression due to the ineffectiveness of many enterprises in Northeast China," he said about one of the main reasons that finally pushed him to leave the coal industry.

Starting in 2010, Ren chose to  enter the cultural industry. "Unlike coal that is physically there and guarantees a secure return, the cultural industry cannot be seen or touched," said his wife, who was initially strongly opposed to this seemingly crazy turnaround. But Ren remained confident about his choice. "Compared with coal, the cultural industry is growing and has strong support from the Chinese government," he said.

Ren's switch from a coal boss to a media professional might seem drastic, were it not for a pronounced trend in this direction. At around the same time, in his hometown of Lüliang, a total of 245 coal bosses abandoned their line of work when the town's 355 coal mines were involved in the coal industry integration campaign that affected all of Shanxi in 2009.

Before this campaign, the Shanxi provincial government had begun a reform of the coal industry in 2006, aiming to eliminate thousands of small, illegal, and unsafe coal mines across the province. Many felt that these were the main causes of the frequent coal mining accidents, which had claimed thousands of lives.

As a result, the number of coal mines in Shanxi has been reduced sharply from 2,598 to the current 1,053, while more than 70 percent of the remaining active coal mines have an annual production capacity of around 900,000 tons. The owners of coal mines have also dropped to near 130, down from more than 2,200.

"The integration has led to a high concentration of coal mines and better workplace safety, while the output of big coal corporations now accounts for more than 70 percent of Shanxi's total coal output," said Wang Hongying, president of the Macro-Economy Research Institute affiliated to the Development and Reform Committee of Shanxi Province, in early September.

Black ops

"This means Shanxi has put an end to its 'coal-boss era'," Li Jin, the chief researcher of the Research Academy of Chinese Enterprises, told the Global Times.

As a special group dating back to the early 1980s, the coal bosses in Shanxi had been a phenomenon over three decades, thanks to China allowing private individuals to run coal mines as part of the country's rapid economic growth.

The strong demand for coal and steel needed to power China's high powered economic engine finally made it possible for coal bosses, who bought exploration rights for coal mines from the government, to accumulate huge fortunes from their excessive and constant exploration of coal resources.

However, these budding tycoons soon drew negative attention. Their fast track to riches, combined with their extravagant lifestyle, was hardly subdued. The public image of coal bosses was associated with consumerist excesses, such as fleets of Hummers, lavish weddings and ridiculous spending sprees, all while their coal miners continued to die in the pits.

For Li, all this controversy is largely due to the backward ways of thinking of many coal bosses.

"Most of these coal bosses were born as farmers and have very limited education or business knowledge. Due to the age-old attitude of Shanxi merchants to focus on accumulating wealth, today, the values of many coal bosses revolves solely around profits," said Li.

Now with thousands of coal bosses leaving the coal industry, entrepreneurs from Shanxi are trying to change their image. At the World Jin-merchant Convention (Jin-merchant is a nickname for Shanxi traders), in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, in mid-August, the entrepreneurs present called for a wholesale re-definition of their roles.

"We are at the eve of the third industrial revolution, based on a combination of the Internet, new materials and new energy. Shanxi Province is in a golden period for economic restructuring, it's a dream but also a responsibility for us to seize this opportunity and find a new way," wrote the Shanxi Daily after the convention.

Tough journey

The search for new identities and industries has never been easy, especially for coal bosses who simply contracted coal mines to various individuals for exploration, then sat back and enjoyed the profits.

Early last year, the newly established United Shanxi Merchants Investment Co., Ltd, which consists of more than 30 former coal bosses from Linfen, Shanxi Province, successfully bid for a block of land in southern Beijing, at a price of near 1 billion yuan, the highest private capital investment from Shanxi for a single real estate project.

The land will be used to build the headquarters for the company, which aims to provide a series of financial services, including a bonds company with a registered investment of 300 million yuan and a micro-credit company.

"The biggest challenge for this transformation is that these executives have little knowledge of the industries they are entering. In the beginning, the founders of a company are rarely able to get too involved in its management, instead, they have to hire professional managers to help run the company," Shanxi native Duan Yi, a senior investment manager with United Shanxi Merchants Investment, told the Global Times.

Failures also dot the path, however. In 2010, several coal barons jointly invested in purchasing a huge tract of land in Lüliang in hope of building a film-production base. But mostly due to a lack of experience in this field, the investment was pulled.

"As far as I know, many attempts by coal bosses to enter new areas finally ended up in failure," said Duan, whose company has invested in billions in the financial industry over the past two years. "It's still too early to reach a conclusion yet," Duan answered when asked about his company's prospects.

"As coal bosses, we still largely rely on guidance from the government as it's not easy for us to find good projects with great prospects and then carry them out well," said Ren, who says that most of his counterparts from the industry are still taking a wait-and-see attitude towards their future investment direction.

Digging left to do

Despite some successful cases of coal bosses transforming themselves amid China's economic restructuring, including one eye-popping 5 billion yuan investment that allowed alcohol company Fenjiu Group to triple its production capacity in 2010, this deep transformation process is far from over, according to Li Jin, of the Research Institute of Chinese Enterprises.

"The flow of private capital within Shanxi Province is a bit fragmented and unstable. Most of the money simply goes to fast-buck schemes and industries, but not to the areas that could help coal enterprises change from being resource-dependent companies into companies that focus on innovation," said Li.

For him, a further development in coal chemicals and support facilities for the coal industry are key to a successful restructuring of Shanxi's coal industry. However, the investment in these areas is far from being sufficient at the moment.

According to a survey jointly conducted by Go-high Investment and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China in 2011 on private capital in China, more than 60 percent of idle funds during the coal industry integration in Shanxi went outside the province or even abroad. Moreover, most Shanxi entrepreneurs with assets of more than 100 million yuan normally own a property portfolio in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

The report of this survey estimates that the investment channels for the around 1 trillion yuan of private capital within Shanxi province remain narrow, mainly concentrate on the coal, real estate, hotel and agriculture industries. "A new main industry following coal hasn't formed yet, instead, the investment structure of private capitals remain chaotic," Li said.

In this regard, Li called for more direct support from the government to help find a better exit plan for many coal bosses.

For Ren, it will still take time to see whether his first TV drama, in which he has already invested tens of millions of yuan, will be a hit.

But other than doing business, Ren has more expectations for his new maiden voyage, which is being shot in Shanxi's Taiyuan and Zhongyang.

"I hope this drama could also help promote Shanxi, but most importantly, by testing the water first, I want to use my example to encourage more coal bosses to participate in the culture industry, and help create a more positive image for coal bosses during our transformation process," said Ren.