About 80 percent of the province is hilly or mountainous and contains large coal reserves, about 207 billion tons in all, or a third of the nation's total. It also ranks among the top 10 Chinese provinces in mineral reserves.

The Yellow and Fen rivers run through it so it has abundant water resources. The gross number annually amounts to 9.83 billion cubic meters, 36 percent of that exploitable. It has more than 700 reservoirs, with a total capacity of 405 billion cubic meters.

Shanxi's cultural heritage helps its tourist industry, thanks to the fact that much of the architecture of the Song, Liao and Jin dynasties is found here. The most attractive sites are the old city of Pingyao, the Yungang Grottoes, and Mount Wutai, all of them on the World Cultural Heritage list.

Shanxi had some great economic progress during the 11th Five Year Plan (2006-2010), with its agriculture, manufacturing, and service industries showing robust growth.

Yuan Qingquan, Shanxi's Party secretary, said they have focused more on sustainable development, cutting the number of coal mines from 2,600 to 1,053, as a way to remove the shoddy work of the older coal mines and replace it with more technologically advanced, large-scale techniques.

In 2010, the province's GDP was 908.8 billion yuan ($142.2 billion), a year-on-year increase of 13.9 percent, despite the global economic slowdown.

Shanxi is also fairly well equipped with infrastructure, with 120,000 kilometers of highways and 3,071 kilometers of railways. The express railway means that Taiyuan is less than two hours from Beijing. It also has direct flights to 40 Chinese cities.

Shanxi has plenty of business opportunities and this modernized, yet historical, province will be a good host for business people from all over. And, this year's expo, continuing the momentum of the previous expos, is a promising place to start putting economic development on a more sustainable path while increasing trade and investment.

The fair is backed by China's State Council and is sponsored by the following: the Ministry of Commerce; State Administration of Taxation; State Administration of Industry and Commerce; State Administration of Radio, Film and Television; National Tourism Administration; Council for the Promotion of International Trade; the Federation of Industry and Commerce; Federation of Industrial Economics; and, of course, the governments of Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei and Hunan provinces.