BOSTON--China's deadliest coal accident in over a year has highlighted the high risks for workers in a labor intensive industry, experts say.
On Feb. 22, a gas blast at the Tunlan Coal Mine in northern Shanxi Province killed at least 78 workers and injured 114 others in the industry's worst accident since December 2007, according to state media reports.
Most of the injured suffered carbon monoxide poisoning, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Early reports quoted a survivor saying he was ordered out of the mine about an hour after the blast because the ventilation system had stopped working. It is unclear whether the same system allowed the buildup of both carbon monoxide and explosive methane gas. Three of the mine's officials have been dismissed from their posts.
A preliminary investigation blamed poor ventilation and lax supervision, the official China Daily reported. In a televised press conference on Feb. 24, Shanxi Governor Wang Jun wept as he apologized to the victims' families. The provincial government and its Communist Party committee have both made a "formal admission of error," the paper said.
Reports have focused on the differences between the Tunlan accident and many others at China's smaller and more dangerous mines, which accounted for the majority of over 3,200 deaths in the industry last year, according to official reports.
Tunlan, owned by the Shanxi Coal Coking Group, is a relatively large mine with a capacity of 5 million tons of coking coal, used in steel production, per year, according to a statement by the State Council. The facility in Shanxi's Gujiao City has been free of major accidents during the previous five years, Xinhua said.
Safety criteria 'lower'
Although Tunlan may have been a comparatively safe mine by China's standards, experts told Radio Free Asia that the accident is a sign of the relatively high risk that workers face throughout the country's coal industry.
Tim Wright, a coal industry expert and professor of Chinese studies at Great Britain's University of Sheffield, said China's safety criteria are "way lower" than those in Western countries.
"In the short term, it would appear that this is a bit of an exception. It's not in one of the small mines that have been inherently more dangerous," said Wright. "It's still, of course, a massive accident and it shouldn't happen."
RFA has calculated that China's fatality rates last year were 47 times higher than those in the United States for each ton of coal mined, based on official safety statistics in the two countries. The Tunlan death toll is the highest in China's coal industry since 105 workers were killed by a gas explosion at the Xinyao mine in Linfen City of Shanxi Province on Dec. 5, 2007.
One factor may be the large number of workers exposed to mine dangers. In the case of the Tunlan mine, 436 workers were reported to be underground when the explosion occurred.
"There's no doubt that Chinese mining is much more labor intensive than Western mining," said Wright. "There's no doubt that puts workers at risk."
Many more workers
Wright said that more modern mines both in China and the West are opencast, or above-ground, and mechanized, rather than labor-intensive underground mines.
In 2005, the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety said it had no accurate count of China's miners due to the high number of migrants, the China Daily reported. But there is little doubt that the country uses many more workers than Western nations to produce each ton of coal.
In 2006, the Asian Development Bank estimated that average coal output per worker in China was only 2.2 percent of that in the United States and 8.1 percent of the rate in South Africa.
"One of the main factors that can reduce accidents is mechanization," said Wright. "The more that underground coal cutting and transport is mechanized, the fewer people are there if something goes wrong."
China's lagging investment in safety and its reliance on abundant labor are matters of economics, said Robert Ebel, senior advisor to the energy and national security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"Labor is cheaper than spending money to put in the mechanized equipment," said Ebel. "The labor's already there and they can get more if they want it, so they do that instead of putting in the equipment that's necessary."
Public anger
But that pattern has provoked public anger, even in China's official press.
In a Feb. 24 posting on the website CRIENGLISH.com from an article in China Business View, commentator Ma Jiuqi reacted strongly to criticisms that the deadly accidents have been "face-losing" for China.
"Face-losing or not, the accident has once again scratched the fragile nerves of our conscience as the death of the 74 coal-mine workers--who were once dear fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons--has brought about another large number of incomplete families who will definitely suffer life-long sorrows and difficulties," the article said.
The death count at Tunlan has since risen to 78.
Although they received less attention, at least three more coal mine accidents took place within a two-week period.
On Feb. 13, eight migrant workers were killed in a gas explosion at the Zhizhe mine in Zhijin County of southwest China's Guizhou Province. The mine had been ordered to stop production for safety reasons in January, but it reopened without approval a day before the blast, Xinhua said.
Another worker was killed on Feb. 22 in a collapse at the Yangcheng No. 2 coal mine in Dangfeng City of central Henan Province. The mine was undergoing an overhaul, the news agency reported.
On Feb. 27, four more workers were trapped when a shaft flooded at a mine in Xianning City of central Hubei Province after heavy rains, Xinhua said.