Remote section of China’s Great Wall damaged by 20 years of mine waste dumping

While foreign leaders and their families walk the iconic restored sections of the Great Wall around Beijing, the ancient stones of a remote Ming-era stretch of the structure in northern central China have been sacrificed for cheaper dumping of coal-mining waste.For nearly 20 years, a section of the wall in Ningwu county, Shanxi province, was used as a short cut to dump slag, despite whistle-blowers repeatedly raising the alarm to officials, according to a report by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.The damage to the Great Wall’s Guojiayao section began in 2007, when an unlicensed miner, Ningwu Chaokai Coal Industry, dug a trench through the structure as a way to dispose of excavation waste, the report said.In 2013, Shenda Chaokai Coal Industry was established through the consolidation of multiple mining teams and continued using the breach to dump slag, bypassing the long mountain roads.CCTV said that local authorities did not respond to repeated reports by whistle-blowers that started in 2015, allowing the vandalism to persist for nearly two decades and leaving a six-metre (19-foot) gap in the wall.One side of the gap in the Great Wall is next to the mining area while on the other is a coal waste dump. Photo: CCTVAncient Chinese rulers built the Great Wall to safeguard their territories, with construction continuing through the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), when it became the world’s largest military structure, stretching more than 21,000km (13,000 miles) across northern China.As China’s most iconic World Cultural Heritage site and a symbol of Chinese civilisation, the wall is a globally renowned tourist destination.