The latest Chinese mine tragedy is being played out slowly as rescuers dig frantically to reach the 17 known survivors in a Shandong gypsum mine. The horrific scenario is all too familiar. China’s industrial safety record is appalling.
It really is not much good claiming that the number of miners dying in 2014 was 931 compared with more than 7,000 in 2002. That is still 931 deaths too many. The problem is well known and well understood. Mine owners seek to save money by cutting back on safety. They also press ahead with the deep underground exploitation of valuable minerals, even when geologists warn of dangerous conditions.
There was clearly something very wrong with the rock structure in this latest disaster in the gypsum mine near the town of Pingyi. The collapse of at least one of the huge underground chambers hollowed out by removing gypsum was so violent that it was recorded on seismographs. Extensive cracks on the surface show just how considerable was the movement of earth deep underground. The owner of the mine was initially thought to have committed suicide by throwing himself into the mine well, for fear of harsh punishment by the Chinese authorities. There are now, however, suspicions that he may have been thrown into the well by angry miners who had long been warning of the dangerous conditions.
Beijing clearly still has a long way to go before it can clean up its industrial health and safety act. It is not just mines. Deaths and injuries on construction sites and oil field installations are an almost daily occurrence. Yet these fatalities and injuries ought not to be happening. The authorities have strict regulations in place. They have sought to make examples of the owners found to be flouting these rules. But the problem is that they are only picking up on these generally greed-induced management failures once a tragedy has occurred.
The real scandal is that these disasters are not being avoided because the rules are being vigorously enforced. It is not the regulations that are failing but the regulators. Somehow or other dangerous mines such as the one at Pingyi are being signed off on by officials whose job is to examine and spot the dangers they represent. The suspicion has to be that the local inspector has been bribed. But then why have not regional or even national administrators conducted spot checks and made their own inspection to see if the local regulator has done the job properly? At best it is a failure of management. At worst there rests the uneasy suspicion that when bribes are being paid, the money goes in at the top of the regulatory pyramid. Local officials are being told by bosses in Beijing not to make too much of a fuss if they find dangerous conditions.
The Chinese president has launched an uncompromising drive against corruption within the ranks of the Communist Party which of course dominates so much of Chinese life. Perhaps it is time he focused on what is going wrong with the management of health and safety in the mining sector, if for no better reason than that each of these underground disasters attracts massive international coverage and besmirches the image of a modern and responsible China that the president is so anxious to portray.
