Villagers of the Nansangyu village were relocated to the suburb area of Hejin city, Shanxi province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Shanxi province issued a three-year subsidence area comprehensive management work plan, which will take place from 2016 to 2018. This will be the largest management scale in years.

According to the plan, announced on July 5, Shanxi will remove 218,000 households by the end of 2017. This involves over 600,000 people living in subsidence area and by then end of 2018, the province will restore the environment of 59 mines and finish 40 land rehabilitation areas.

Each village should also develop a leading industry, enabling the removed farmers to live with an average income.

This photo shows Nansangyu village before its relocation. Here, there were dangers of severe surface subsidence due to long and large scale coal mining. [Photo by Wang Feihang/Xinhua]

The Nansangyu village is a small village at the southwest session of Lvliang Mountain, in Shanxi province and has more than 600 households and a population of 2,500 villagers. People here used to live their lives on the rich coal resources located underground, while the long and large scale coal mining in the past have led to severe surface subsidence and exhaustion of water resources.

Over 90 percent of the Nansangyu village's underground areas are gone and 85 percent of the houses have been found cracked and collapsed. In 2008, the whole village was relocated to the suburban area of the Hejin city and had their new apartments, while villagers received employment training and now live in the city with stable jobs.