ZHAO DONGXING’S fingertips and nails reveal a faint blackness, a trace left behind by more than 30 years of work in the mines.

Today, he sits in the 5G-supported control room equipped with tracked transport motor cars for unmanned driving, his hands skillfully operating the console.

“In the past, mining operations required the seamless coordination of three individuals: a driver, a switch operator, and an ore unloader,” he said, adding that now there is no need for miners to go underground while efficiency has also improved.

Located in the Gobi Desert in Northwest China’s Gansu Province, Jinchang City was established due to its abundant mineral resources, making it a typical resource-based industrial city, dubbed the “Nickel Capital of China.”

Growing up in Jinchang, Zhao naturally embraced a career as a miner. His firsthand knowledge of the challenging aspects of this job is rooted in his family’s mining background, with both of his parents being local miners.

“When coming out of the mine, the entire body would be covered in blackish mine residues,” the 52-year-old veteran miner recalled.

In 2019, Zhao’s company, Jinchuan Group Co., Ltd., initiated the transformation of its nickel mining operations by incorporating intelligent technologies such as manless driving. According to Zhao, workers need to possess a certain level of experience and knowledge to respond to system alarms and make quick judgments in the event of locomotive malfunctions.

The updated systems require technical personnel for development and maintenance, as well as staff for data analysis and monitoring, said Zhao Peng, deputy director of the company.

The “smart” revolution is not limited to the underground mines; it extends to the product packaging production lines.

Bai Xiang, working at the nickel smelting plant of Jinchuan Group, mentioned that the tasks of inspection, processing, measuring, packaging, and warehousing are now efficiently managed by a monitoring platform utilizing 5G and the Industrial Internet.

Throughout the progression from physical labor to adopting roles resembling “guardians” of machines and finally to the present era of intelligent automation, workers have transformed their work into a technical profession, Bai said.

In China, an increasing number of companies, like Jinchuan Group, are embracing smart transformation.

The country aims to build 30 “fully connected” 5G factories in 10 key industries by 2023, as it has fast-tracked industrial Internet development through integration with 5G technologies. (Xinhua)