The face of China enterprises: the Shenhua Energy Co.

An official believes Shenhua soon will overtake U.S.-based industry leader Peabody Energy.

BEIJING (AP) — Ling Wen seems an unlikely coal baron. A longtime banker with a penchant for smartly tailored suits, he is a rising star among a new generation of Communist Party technocrats guiding China’s industrial flagships.

Ling is also CEO of China’s biggest — and the world’s second-largest — coal company, Shenhua Energy Co., a sprawling energy empire of railways, ports and power plants.

In a country where carnage in the mines is commonplace, Shenhua’s operations have a safety and efficiency record on a par with global industry leaders. Ling is also exploring ways to make coal — a chief culprit in global warming — a cleaner resource.

“We must do what we can do. We must try our best,” said Ling, noting the company’s efforts to save and recycle water, plant forests and grasslands and cut back on emissions from power plants.

New breed

Ling represents a new breed of managers who have been put in charge of waging a corporate revolution, turning China’s lumbering state companies into modern, profitable competitors.

Unlike their predecessors, Ling and the new corporate chieftains generally have more savvy in international business.

“Promotions are still determined by the party, not the company,” said Bob Broadfoot of the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy. “They are still from the same mold. But they are getting more comfortable working internationally.”

Ling, a Communist Party member, had already earned the title of national “model worker” as a senior executive at China’s No. 1 lender Industrial and Commercial Bank of China when he was tapped to become Shenhua’s chief financial officer in 2001. He became Shenhua’s president in August 2006, 14 months after overseeing the company’s June 2005 share listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Ling believes Shenhua soon will overtake U.S.-based industry leader Peabody Energy, which sold 248 million tons of coal in 2006. He projects Shenhua Group’s total coal sales for 2007 at 260-270 million tons, up from 240 million tons last year.

Still, that accounts for less than 10 percent of China’s total coal output, which topped 2.3 billion tons last year.

Barring some huge acquisition by a competitor, Shenhua Group should be No. 1 in sales and output by the end of this year, Ling said.