Coal mining in China is widely considered one of the world’s deadliest jobs. Government statistics record that in the first nine and a half months of last year, 1,146 Chinese coal miners died in work-related accidents, about four deaths per day—and most analysts assume official numbers represent significant underreporting. […]

Still, not all Chinese coal mines are equally dangerous. Following the Xiangshui tragedy, Guizhou’s Deputy Governor Sun Guoqiang told local reporters, with surprising candor, that state-run mines are more deadly than private mines—because state-run firms can rely on connections and official favors to evade safety regulations. He called the situation “grave.”

[…] The robustness of the link [Fisman and Wang] found was striking: Connected Chinese companies averaged five times as many fatalities as similar unconnected companies. What’s more, the arrival or departure of a highly connected executive was marked by, on average, the death rate per 10,000 workers rising by 10 or falling by 6.4, respectively, in the following year. In a research summary published in the January/February 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review, they dubbed it “the unsafe side of Chinese crony capitalism.” “A fivefold difference I personally find to be stunning,” says Fisman. “I would have expected maybe a 10 percent bump, not 500 percent—this is a case where the fact of a connection is not as surprising as the magnitude of it.”

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Crowds of survivors protested outside the local disaster relief headquarters on Sunday night, after it emerged that victims had been cremated without their families’ approval. Local authorities apologized, but explained that they were not equipped to deal with so many dead bodies at once. From Xinhua:

“Why can’t I see my child for the last time?” Luo Yuanju, a migrant worker who hurried home after she got the tragic news that she had lost 29 relatives in the landslide, told the Beijing News. “This cremation was done without our approval. Why couldn’t the authorities wait for one or two days?”

[…] Government authorities had cremated all the bodies by Sunday, triggering anger from the victims’ families. According to the tradition of the village, where dwellers are mostly members of the Yi ethnic minority, the bodies of the dead are usually buried instead of cremated.

Lei Chuying, deputy head of Zhenxiong county, said cremation orders were given due to consideration of epidemic prevention and people’s feelings.

“Many parts of the bodies were missing while the buried were dug out,” Lei said, “The painful scene might cause trauma among relatives.”

An official investigation quickly concluded that the landslide was an entirely natural disaster, but local authorities have still faced criticism over their lack of preparedness. From Global Times:

Jiang Xingwu, a geological expert in Yunnan, told a press conference on Saturday afternoon that the area’s steep incline of 35 to 50 degrees and the composition of the soil made it prone to landslides.

Jiang said that the earthquakes with magnitudes of 5.7 and 5.6 which hit neighboring Yiliang county in September 2012 were also a cause, and the continued rainy and snowy weather over the past month led to the saturation of the slope, with gravity eventually causing the landslide.

The People’s Daily, a flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, Sunday questioned why there wasn’t any early warning given the prolonged rainy and snowy weather over the past month.

[…] Also of concern was the fact that a 2010 geological disaster prevention plan by the Zhenxiong government showed that the local government had compiled files for 184 hazardous sites including 29 major ones areas, but Gaopo village was not on the list.

In addition, some locals continued to voice suspicions that nearby mining activity was really to blame. From Xinhua:

Some villagers believe the landslide may have been triggered by a gas explosion, and they doubt the experts’ conclusion that the coal mine boundary was 500 meters away from the landslide.

“The mining area is right beneath the landslide,” a coal miner in Gaopo said, as quoted by media on Monday.

Witnesses told Xinhua they saw “earth and rocks sprayed up into the air” when the landslide occurred. At the same time, some other villagers said they had not been to the scene and only heard about the “explosion” from others.

[…] Wang Shijun, another person who lost family in the landslide, said a big crack appeared before the landslide. “Big enough to swallow a bull.”

However, some villagers said the crack was 1 meter wide and some said a half meter wide, while others said there was no crack.

Update: Global Times reports that 72 of the villagers have written to the State Council requesting a second investigation into the cause of the landslide.

Luo Yuanshou, the brother of a victim, initiated the joint letter and sent to the State Council on Wednesday. The villagers believe the Gaopo coal mine, which is 500 meters from the landslide scene, could have played a role in the landslide. Villagers wondered why the hillside remained stable following a 50-day snowstorm in 2008.

Luo told the Global Times that the villagers are demanding the State Council order the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, the Ministry of Land and Resources and the China University of Geosciences to investigate the landslide. The original investigation “hastily concluded the landslide had nothing to do with the mine without even an on-site investigation of the mine. The hill was not that steep and is covered with vegetation,” said Luo.

Jiang Xingwu, who headed the original investigation, told the Global Times Wednesday that he stands by the results of his investigation, adding he understands that the villagers may want another opinion.

The preference for burial over cremation is not limited to the Yi: see ‘Henan Officials Commit a Grave Error‘ on CDT. Neither is Friday’s landslide the only apparently natural disaster for which human activity has been blamed: see ‘2008 Sichuan Earthquake Likely Man-Made‘.

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Hao, who asked that he be identified only by his surname, is a coal miner in Hegang, a mining town in northeastern Heilongjiang province. Like many of the miners in Hegang, Hao is employed at small bituminous coal mine by one of the dozens of private mining companies that operate the area’s hundred or so mines. His mine employs a few hundred people, most of whom — like Mr. Hao — work below the surface.

[...S]tudies have shown bituminous coal dust to be remarkably carcinogenic. A 2012 study of homes in Xuanwei, China, found that people whose households cooked with bituminous coal are far more likely to develop lung cancer (18-20% likely) than those who did not (0.5% likely). Men are 36 times more likely to die of lung cancer if they lived in homes that cooked with bituminous coal; women are 99 times more likely. Unsurprisingly, these results are also apparent in miners; a 2011 study of coal miners in Xuanwei found that coal miners also are at increased risk of lung cancer, and that the younger a miner starts and the longer he stays in the mines, the more likely he is to develop cancer. Specific rates varied based on subjects’ family histories and exposure to carcinogens outside of work, but in general, coal miners were found to be at least twice as likely to develop lung cancer as regular citizens, and in some instances the increase in risk for miners was even higher.

[...] The soot also gets in his lungs, of course, and with thirty years of mining already under his belt, Mr. Hao — who has not been screened — has a high risk of developing lung cancer even if he never sets foot in a coal mine again. He knows coal mining is a deadly profession, and is grateful to have made it this far without any major accidents. But though the number of deadly accidents is dropping, cancer risk rates climb with each successive year a miner works. Many miners who escape being buried alive or killed in explosions will ultimately still fall victim to coal mining’s slowest and quietest danger: lung cancer.

When a miner gets cancer, or even gets injured on the job, results can vary. Mr. Hao tells us smaller mining companies don’t provide mine workers with insurance, or even regular contracts, so if you get sick, whether or not you’ll get financial help with your medical bills from the company is very much up for grabs. In his experience, Hao tells us, the people who get larger compensation settlements tend to be the people capable of making a fuss and causing trouble for the company if their demands aren’t met. If you and your family members can’t raise a stink, he says, you’ll get less money.

See also Black Lungs: Hidden Tolls of Coal Mining, via CDT.

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The Xinhua news agency reported that there were 28 workers underground Saturday in the state-owned Xiangshi coal mine in southeastern Guizhou province when the coal and gas explosion hit at about 11 a.m. local time ((0300 UTC). Xinhua said five of those were rescued.

Nearly 2,000 people died in coal mine accidents last year in China, where lax safety standards make the mines among the world’s deadliest. But official statistics show the number of fatalities has been falling, dropping 19 percent between 2010 and 2011.

China’s coal mines continue to be one of the deadliest in the world, due to lax regulations, corruption, and inefficiency. According to Bloomberg, the State Council is tightening the rules for reopening coal mines after recent accidents:

Mines that don’t meet the necessary safety requirements shouldn’t resume operations under any conditions, the council said in yesterday’s statement, citing illegal reopenings as the cause of several deadly accidents recently.

China suspended operations at smaller coal mines earlier this month to boost safety ahead of a once-in-a-decade leadership transition, and policy makers are moving to improve standards after spate of accidents. Eighteen people were killed yesterday at a mine in the southwestern province of Guizhou.

Small mines with little resources and that don’t meet safety standards shouldn’t easily receive permits to reopen, the council said. Larger mines without necessary safety technology should consider merging with bigger companies that do, it said.

Read more about mine safety in China, via CDT.

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Rescuers found the body of the last miner, identified as Zhou Ping, in the shaft of Gaokeng Coal Mine in Pingxiang City of Jiangxi Province at about 3:10 p.m., the rescue headquarters said in a statement.

In addition, 11 injured miners are still under medical treatment at a local hospital. Of the six critically injured, five suffered burns to over 50 percent of their bodies.

Thirty-eight miners were working in the mine when the accident occurred at about 12:55 p.m. Sunday. Twenty-three had escaped on their own or been pulled out to safety.

The investigation into the cause of the accident is underway.

This explosion comes only days after one of the deadliest mining disasters this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, China’s coal industry remains one of the deadliest for miners despite the government’s attempts to improve conditions:

A total of 76 people have been killed in three Chinese coal-mining accidents since Aug. 13, according to reports by the State Administration of Work Safety. In one of the worst accidents in recent years, 45 people were killed in an Aug. 29 mine explosion outside the city of Panzhihua in Sichuan province, while 14 people died in a blast Sunday in Jiangxi province.

Growing social awareness in China of workplace safety, and of the environment, represents an added political challenge to the ruling Communist Party, which faces increasingly loud public demands to deliver more than economic growth.

One of the nation’s largest miners, Shandong province-based Yanzhou Coal Mining Co.,600188.SH -0.35% for instance, says in its latest annual report that it has recorded a rate of zero fatalities per million tons of raw coal mined in each of the past five years. The biographies of its top executives highlight their training in worker safety and its financial accounts tally rising compliance costs, like a 50 yuan-per-metric-ton work-safety charge that applies to one of its big Shanxi mines.

“Credit has to go to the authorities in Shanxi and to some extent Inner Mongolia,” says Geoffrey Crothall, director of communications at the China Labor Bulletin. “But the rest of the country hasn’t gotten the same message.”

Amid the growing need for coal and concern for miners’ safety, the Business Spectator reports the Chinese government’s plans to close over 600 smaller mines:

China’s State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) has decided to close 625 small coal mines this year, Business Standard reports.

According the newspaper, safety monitoring equipment was found to be inefficient, with investigators finding production continued despite the presence of highly concentrated gas in the mind.

SAWS spokesman Huang YI said coal mining remains a high-risk industry in the country despite improvements over the past decade.

“Lessons must be drawn from recent accidents to eliminate potential hazards that also exist in the non-coal mining, transportation, construction and manufacturing sectors, as well as in industries involving the storage of hazardous chemicals, fireworks and explosives,” he said.

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When Mr Hu took up his post in 2009, it might have seemed a cushy assignment. Inner Mongolia’s backward economy was booming thanks to demand for its minerals, ranging from copper to rare earths, but especially its coal. Its ethnic Mongols were far less rebellious than the unruly Tibetans upon whom Hu Jintao imposed martial law in 1989 when he was Tibet’s party chief (Hu Chunhua, who is described in official hagiographies as a fluent Tibetan speaker, was there at the time, too, as a junior official). Inner Mongolia has long been a majority ethnic-Han province, with Mongols making up less than 20% of its 24.7m people (several hundred thousand of them are herders). In May 2011, however, Mongols in Xilin Gol, a sparsely populated prefecture about the size of Britain, rattled Mr Hu by staging the region’s biggest protests in 20 years.

[…] To the herders, mining brings few obvious benefits. Over the past decade, thanks largely to the rush for resources, Inner Mongolia has recorded the fastest GDP growth of any Chinese province (17% annually on average between 2001 and 2011—see chart). But mine workers are mostly hired from elsewhere, says Sun Xueli of the Inner Mongolia Academy of Social Sciences. Herders also find it hard to find jobs in Inner Mongolia’s prospering cities. Their mother tongue, Mongolian, is unintelligible to most Hans. Some hotels in Hohhot forbid staff from using it, says a Mongol academic.

Government efforts to protect the grasslands from over-grazing are not making the herders’ lives any easier. Even as money-spinning mines have proliferated, restrictions have been imposed on grazing. Over the past decade the government has moved more than a quarter of Xilin Gol’s herders off poor-quality grassland into agricultural or urban jobs. But the policy is resented by some Mongols as an attempt to eliminate herding, which they say the government regards as backward.

Efforts to settle nomadic herders in the name of grassland protection are euphemistically described as “ecological migration”. But a Mongolian rapper sang last year, “Overgrazing is a myth and a lie/ We have grazed animals here thousands of years/ Why has the desertification started since only a few decades ago?” Traditional grazing had become part of the grassland ecosystem, and preventing it has promoted not natural restoration but further degradation. At Human Rights in China, Tenzin Norbu of the Central Tibetan Administration (or “Government in Exile”) argues that both the social and ecological effects of the similar policies enacted in Tibet have been devastating, and that their real purpose is to clear the way for further mining.

In 2003, a grassland rehabilitation policy was implemented throughout China’s grasslands and in pastoral areas. In Chinese, the Restore Grassland Policy is called tuimu huanco（退牧还草）, which means “closing pastures to restore grasslands.” The key measure of this policy is the relocation of herders from the grasslands to state-built housing, a measure that has been intensified in recent years. The land lease certificates guaranteeing nomads long term land tenure have been nullified. Instantly, all of the herders’ skills, risk management strategies, environmental services, traditional knowledge, and biodiversity conservation practices were made superfluous. The harshest measures have been enforced in Golok and Yushu prefectures, in the area China considers to be the source of its great rivers. There, in Chinese view, the downstream water supply is threatened by rangeland degradation caused by destructive nomads. In this large area, nomads are frequently “villagized” in new concrete settlements called “line villages” that are far from their customary grazing land, and they are required to sell their livestock.

[…] Joblessness and alcoholism amongst the youth are prevalent in the new settlements—where the elders are often seen reminiscing their past lives and reliving them in their memories, and the younger ones are scavenging to earn a little extra money. From our recent interactions with drogpas and herders who fled into exile in India, and from research conducted inside Tibet, we came to know that the current policy of forced “villagization” is in fact a very strategic move on the part of the state to keep all the mobile pastoral wanderers on a tight leash and to have open access to pastures for extractive industries without facing any resentment. The policy also enables the central government to boast that it has made sizable investments in elevating the lifestyles of local residents. But, as many anthropologist and scholars recognize, development has less to do with external materialistic life than with the freedom to choose and to lead the life that one values and respects. Given the choice of livelihood, we believe that almost all the residents of these newly constructed concrete settlements would prefer to go back to their previous lifestyle without a second thought, even it if meant leaving a two-bedroom house.

In addition to “ecological migration” policies and the encroachment of thirsty mining operations, Inner Mongolian herders face a modern industrial farming system which does not accommodate traditional practices. From Shu Ni at chinadialogue:

Dairy production is split: on one side, the milk of pasture-grazed cattle does not reach industrialised supply chains, but is processed into traditional foods by herders. On the other side, large-scale dairy farms on the edges of cities and on main roads, their cattle fed on fodder and milked robotically, sell milk to big companies.

[…] Despite years of visits to Inner Mongolia, I have never heard of dairy giants purchasing milk from naturally grazed cattle. Some milk does originate in Inner Mongolia, but it comes from cows in dairy farms around the cities, raised on fodder, not grass. Milk from grazing cattle does not reach the industrialised supply chain. The herders continue to go bust and the number of farmers and cows is dwindling. But for the dairy companies, sales are increasing. There is more to this than meets the eye.

Many of Inner Mongolia’s problems are mirrored across the border in the independent Mongolian republic, an independent post-Soviet democracy whose 600,000 square miles contain a population of only 2.7 million. (Inner Mongolia accommodates almost 4 million Mongolians and nearly 21 million others on an area three-quarters the size). Its GDP growth is now the world’s highest, driven mainly by China’s appetite for raw materials. From Dan Levin at The New York Times:

First-world profits are colliding with third-world problems. A series of flock-devastating winters and the lure of mining riches have attracted thousands of herders from the grasslands. They live on the city’s outskirts in crowded yurt slums some locals refer to as Mongolia’s favelas. Unemployment is rampant there; electricity and drinkable water are not. The less fortunate take shelter in the sewers, where they huddle beside hot-water pipes when the temperature plunges to 40 below.

“At the moment people are waiting for the mining wealth to somehow spill over to them,” said Sumati Luvsandendev, director of the Sant Maral Foundation, a nonprofit organization. According to the foundation’s recent polls, 96 percent of Mongolians think corruption is widespread and 80 percent say they believe their country’s oligarchs have too much power.

[…] “Mongolia is at a crossroad,” said Saurabh Sinha, an economist with the United Nations Development Program in Ulan Bator. “Will the government use the mining wealth sustainably and equitably for improving the lives of all its people? Or will it become a Nigeria?”

Attitudes towards ethnic politics are one apparent difference between the two Mongolias. The Economist notes that unrest in Inner Mongolia, at least compared with Tibet or Xinjiang, has remained relatively free from anti-Han and “separatist” overtones. But according to Aubrey Belford at The Global Mail in February (via Max Fisher), the same issues have given rise to a heavily racialised nationalism in the Mongolian republic. Illustrating this is another rapper, Gee:

He begins, in the guttural rolls and pops of the Mongolian language:

“Way better than a chink who perceives the world with his stomach / I’m a Mongol / That’s why you have to bow to me.”

As the crowd sings along, he paints a picture often depicted here – adorned with unvarnished racism – of the proud land of Genghis Khan being gobbled up by voracious Chinese. All around, money is flowing in, but greed, division and miscegenation reign. Until, that is, Mongols unite to throw out the interlopers.

[…] “The whores you bought, the ministers you bought / They’re not Mongols – they’re half-breeds / Mongolia is growing and will not be tricked by the Chinese / The Mongolian era is coming to wipe everything old out of its way”

Everywhere the rise of China is disrupting the old order of things, realigning economies and shaking up politics. But perhaps no country is finding itself as dramatically sucked in by China’s economic magnetism, or as utterly terrified by its growing geopolitical clout.

Wendy Qian contributed to this post.

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The explosion killed the miners on Sunday morning at the mine in Lianyuan city, though 39 others escaped, the official Xinhua news agency said, quoting the local government.

Water rushed into the mine on Wednesday evening, trapping 16 miners underground as 24 others managed to escape.

The accident was not reported to the government until the following day, delaying rescue efforts by 12 hours, Xinhua said, adding that the mine's owner, Liu Yaping, was now in police custody.

There are also reports of 11 workers confirmed to be alive under the flooded mine. China Daily reports:

Rescuers confirmed early Sunday that 11 of the 16 trapped miners were alive three days after they became trapped under a flooded colliery pit in central China's Hunan province.

Medical personnel had gone into the pit carrying stretchers and first-aid material, said the rescuers, adding that the 11 miners would be saved out of the pit in three groups and rushed to hospital for further treatment.

Six professional teams of 90 members and more than 1,000 people were at the scene to carry out rescue operations.

According to the Xinhua, three miners have been rescued after being underground for three days:

The first group of three miners were lifted to ground early Sunday after being trapped for over three days under a flooded colliery pit in central China's Hunan province, rescuers said.

The three mine workers were pulled out of a pit of Qielichong colliery in Leiyang city, at about 1:40 a.m. and were immediately sent to a local hospital, the rescue headquarters said in a statement.

While this is the most recent accident involving coal mines, the Wall Street Journal has reported that safety improvements have cut one-third of fatalities:

Mine floods usually occur when miners drill through to an abandoned shaft that has been allowed to fill with water. Along with gas explosions and cave-ins, they make China's coal mines the world's deadliest, although the death rate has fallen.

Safety improvements have cut annual fatalities by about one-third from a high of 6,995 in 2002. That improvement has come despite a tripling in the output of coal that generates most of China's electrical power.

Technological advances, better training and the closing of the most dangerous, small-scale mining operations have also made rescues more successful, even after several days.

In April 2010, 115 miners were pulled from a flooded mine in the northern province of Shanxi after more than a week underground. The miners survived by eating sawdust, tree bark, paper and even coal. Some strapped themselves to the walls of the shafts with their belts to avoid drowning while they slept.

See also Documentary: To the Light, via CDT.

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The country’s top leaders have made provisions for both increasing overall coal production and easing the coal-transportation bottleneck. The most recent Five-Year Plan, the central government’s primary planning document, calls for significantly increasing coal production, which will be achieved by developing and expanding 14 large “coal-industry bases” across western China; these bases will include facilities for coal mining, petrochemical processing, and coal-fired power plants ….

Yet, in expanding coal-industry bases in west China, one crucial challenge has so far received far less attention than it deserves: Coal-based industries are massively water-intensive (in fact, coal mining, coal-based power generation, and petrochemical processing together account for more than one-fifth of China’s total water usage). And much of western China is already short on water — think Gobi desert and camels, as opposed to Pearl River Delta rice paddies. “The west of China is an environmentally fragile area,” says Professor Wang Xiujun, who conducts research on climate and precipitation jointly for the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography and the University of Maryland. “There’s not much water to spare.”

See also Economic Observer (via CDT) on problems with the south’s inter-province electricity trade last year, after water and coal shortages in Guizhou forced power rationing in the industrial Pearl River Delta.

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In a hot, concrete hut filled with acetylene fumes, an elderly Mongolian miner struggles to contain her excitement as she plucks a sizzling inch-long nugget of gold from a grubby cooling pot and raises it to the light.

Khorloo, 65, and her sons spent the day scrutinizing half a dozen CCTV screens as workers at the Bornuur gold processing plant whittled 1.2 metric metric tonnes of ore down to 123 grams of pure gold that could earn the family as much as $6,000 ….

“It took us a week to dig this out,” Khorloo said, holding the nugget. “But we dug for three years to reach the vein.”

The Guardian’s Jonathan Watts took a broader view of the “Minegolian” resource boom in an article and video report last November, examining the balance between its colossal potential economic benefits and its heavy social and environmental impact.

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In the steel sector, we have vast deposits of iron ore and metallurgical coal. The problem has been that they have been on the opposite sides of the country and with our high internal transport costs have been uneconomical to combine and produce steel in commercially viable quantities.

China’s steel production is now over 700 million tons, almost double what is was when I first went to China as Ambassador. Soon China will have a steel sector of close to 1 billion tons per annum. The world has never seen anything on this scale before and, of course, Australia will continue to be a major source of iron ore and coking coal. At the same time China’s wages and costs rising rapidly, especially in the eastern seaboard provinces where much of China’s new steel making capacity has been relocated.

The challenge then for Australia is how do we make ourselves an integral part of the plans to restructure the Chinese steel industry? This is a historic opportunity for Australia to add value to Australia’s resources ….

The challenge for Australia in China’s growth over the next twenty years is not to stand back from it, or try to pretend it is not happening or will go away, or seek to build closer relations with smaller weaker states. It is to recognize the reality of it and the vast implications it holds for Australia, possibly more so than for any other country, and to imagine how we can use it to strengthen Australia and increase its prosperity.

See also Chinese “Land Grab” Tests Australian Farming Dynasties, via CDT.

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A total of 420 miners have been killed in accidents so far this year, and 183 are still unaccounted for. China’s voracious appetite for coal, which provides more than two-thirds of the country’s electricity, has seen small, and sometimes unsafe, mines pop up across the country ….

… Du Guoyin, a professor at the Chinese University of Geosciences, said the sheer number of coal mines made them difficult to regulate. “These mines are small, and you cannot expect that local officials will always strictly follow the regulations sent down by Beijing,” he said.

“The media pays attention to the accidents, and mines are usually shut down in the aftermath to improve safety controls, but at the same time, China often does not have enough electricity, so unsafe mines are forced to reopen.

“It is also very possible that these accident prone mines have cheated their way through their inspections. And there is no fundamental solution to that,” he added.

ChinaGeeks’ Charles Custer calculates that the official death toll in China’s coal mines over the past ten years—47,676—is equivalent to 31 Titanics, 15 9/11 attacks, 2 Battles of Thermopylae or 1,288 Ted Bundys. But Stephen Sullivan at Seeing Red in China estimates that even these deaths may represent less than a third of the true figure.

Update: The BBC reports that the Yunnan mine had been operating illegally:

The pit, in the south-western Yunnan province, lost its licence a year ago ….

A huge rescue operation is still going on at the mine. Investigators believe a sudden release of gas into the pit trapped the miners.

But there are conflicting accounts of whether it was an explosion or a leak.

The incident happened early on Thursday at the Sizhuang mine in Yunnan province’s Qujing city ….

Xinhua quoted local work safety officials saying the mine had been operating without a licence when the accident happened.

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A rock burst occurred in the Qianqiu Coal Mine in the city of Sanmenxia, Henan province, following a 2.9-magnitude earthquake on Thursday evening.

Of the 75 miners working in the shaft when the accident happened, 14 managed to escape and four were confirmed dead soon after accident. The remaining 57 workers were stranded in the mine.

Rescuers rescued eight workers as of Friday and found four bodies while searching for the trapped Saturday morning, bringing the total death toll to eight.

The incident in Henan comes less than a week after a gas explosion killed 29 workers in a coal mine in Hunan province, the worst accident in recent months, and also in the wake of fatal blasts at mining sites in Guizhou and Yunan. An AP report today in The Guardian notes that annual fatalities at China’s coal mines are now a third of the reported highs in 2002, though an AFP report cites campaigners who believe the true figures have been understated.

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Five of the workers were rescued, while one climbed out of an air shaft of the Xialiuchong Coal Mine, the statement said.

The work safety administration said rescue work was complete as no other miners were working at the time of the explosion.

CCTV said that the mine’s operating license had been revoked in the first half of this year because it did not adopt measures to pump out dangerous gases from underground, but that the mine continued production without permission.

Although there has been improvement in mining conditions over the past few years and a slow drop in annual fatalities, China’s coalmines are still the deadliest in the world. BBC adds:

In 2010, 2,433 people died in coal mine accidents in China, although this was an improvement on the toll of 2,631 a year earlier.

The industry’s safety record has improved in recent years as smaller, illegal mines have been closed, but labour rights groups say the actual death toll is likely much higher than official statistics, partly due to under-reporting of accidents as mine bosses seek to limit their economic losses and avoid punishment.

Annual fatalities are about now at about one-third of the high of nearly 7,000 who died in 2002.

See also: Death Toll Reaches 17 in China Coal Mine Blast via CDT.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: coal industry, coal mining, gas explosion, Hunan, mine safety
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Shanxi Huang Jia Po is a village on the edge. For centuries, 500 farmers have lived here, carving stepped fields into the side of their mountain and planting corn, marrows and aubergines in the fertile yellow soil that covers Shanxi province.

But the children of the farmers will have to live somewhere else, because it is only a matter of time before the village falls into the honeycomb of mining tunnels below. Standing in his courtyard, Lu Linhu points to a 30ft deep hole that has opened up in the cement outside his front door. Behind him, wide cracks have appeared in the walls and ceiling of his bedroom. The 38-year-old Mr Lu, like many other villagers, has used gaudy posters to cover the holes and ease his state of mind.

“We cannot really sleep properly any more,” he said. “At night, we can feel the shaking of the ground when they use dynamite in the mine. And when it rains, the water comes flooding in through the cracks.

“We have sent our children away to live near their school, but when they come to visit I feel extra nervous, in case the roof collapses.” […]

At the top of the mountain, miners said they were pulling 900,000 tons of coal a year from the ground. “Why would we stop? There is still coal underneath,” one shrugged.

Residents do receive some compensation but, as in the case of dam relocations elsewhere, it does not cover the full cost of the move.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month on the relocation of a mining town in the Swedish Arctic to allow the extraction of iron ore, much of it bound for China. In contrast with resettlements in China, however, development plans even take into account the migratory habits of local reindeer.

“We knew we didn’t really have a choice,” says Ann Catrin Fredriksson, municipal director of urban planning and environment. “And this is a company town, so there was no opposition.” […]

Kiruna is a remarkable place. Temperatures are 40 degrees below zero in the winter. A favorite snack is smoked reindeer wrapped in a sort of pita bread. “Not a great place to find a nice suit, but if you’re shopping for a drill that can operate 300 feet underground, you’re in luck,” says Anders Holstenson, an LKAB employee and mine tour guide ….

“We don’t really know where the church is going yet,” says Pastor Lise-Lott Wikolm, “but it shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s made of wood, you can just pick apart the pieces and put them together again.”

Relocation is not an option for the 5th Century Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan which faces destruction to make way for a Chinese-run copper mine. Archaeologists are working against an unknown deadline to salvage as many of the site’s relics as possible before the miners move in.

Sources:

China’s coal rush leaves three million living on the edge – Telegraph
Cold Calculus of Arctic Mining Sends a Swedish Town Packing – Wall Street Journal

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Afghanistan, coal mining, copper, iron ore, relocation, Shanxi, Sweden
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The official Xinhua News Agency said in a brief report that Li Lindong was executed Aug. 18. The report, dated Aug. 19, was posted to a regional news website and appeared to not be widely circulated.

The herder, Mergen, who like many Mongols uses just one name, was killed May 10 while he and others were blocking the road through their village to protest noise and pollution produced by coal trucks transiting the grasslands. Police said Li ran over Mergen and then dragged his body for 160 yards (145 meters) before he died.

Li was sentenced in June after a six-hour trial at the Intermediate People’s Court in the region’s Xilingol League. Fellow driver Lu Xiangdong, who had been sitting in the cab of Li’s truck when he drove over the herder, was also convicted of homicide and sentenced to life in prison, state media said earlier.

See also earlier CDT posts on Li’s sentencing, the initial wave of protests, and others since.

Source: China executes man for running over Mongol herder – Associated Press

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: coal mining, execution, Inner Mongolia, Inner Mongolia protests
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