At least 10 people, including five children, died when their overloaded minibus plunged into a mountain valley in southern China on Friday, state media reported, the latest in a string of such accidents which have sparked public anger.

The nine-seat vehicle was carrying 20 people when it ran off the road in Guangxi region, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Ten survived, including a three-month-old infant who was in critical condition, it added.

The deaths of 18 nursery school children in a bus crash in November last year caused a wave of fury and prompted Premier Wen Jiabao to pledge more money for rural bus services, especially for those carrying children.

Chinese state media reports aside from the ten killed, another ten have been injured, according to Xinhua:

The 10 injured are receiving treatment, including a three-month-old infant who is in critical condition, the spokesman said.

The infant’s mother, 24-year-old Wei Yuefang, said she and her family were in the minibus heading for the home village of Bahaotun in Qibainong township to attend a wedding.

She said she was carrying her sleeping daughter when the accident happened, adding that they were thrown out of the vehicle while it was falling into the valley.

The cause of the accident is under investigation.

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Post tags: accidents, children, public safety, road accidents, safety, traffic, transportation
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The Hanyi High-speed Railway, which links the provincial capital Wuhan and Yichang city, is expected to open in May. The collapsed part has already undergone test runs.

The roadbed of a 300-meter section rail in Qianjiang city collapsed Friday afternoon. Workers working the section said heavy rain in the past few days may have caused the problem.

The collapse came just days after a contractor on the rail line was accused of cutting corners in construction, and then distorting a supposedly independent quality assessment. From Global Times, via Seeing Red in China:

A Time Weekly report said Thursday that CGGC’s earth supplier Ni Hongjun reported to the authorities in 2010 that CGGC employees replaced at least 90,000 cubic meters of spall [crushed rock] with earth for personal benefit, causing serious safety risks for high-speed trains and passengers.

However, a “third-party” inspection report released in September 2011 by the Civil Engineering Testing Center of Central South University said, under the influence of CGGC, that the project was “qualified”. The report prevented the authorities and the public from knowing the truth ….

The Wuhan-Yichang high-speed railway runs in Central China’s Hubei Province, an area prone to flooding caused by the Yangtze River and its tributaries. Replacing spall with earth for the project amounts to building a house on the foundation of cake, the source said.

See also Seeing Red in China’s post on the collapse, which it describes as “a tragedy averted by luck”.

High-speed rail safety has been a particularly sensitive issue in China since last year’s Wenzhou disaster, which killed 40 people. Poor construction was a major source of public anger following the widespread collapse of school buildings during the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, but nevertheless remains rife.

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Post tags: construction project, high-speed rail, high-speed rail crash, Hubei, safety, wenzhou, wuhan, Yangtze River
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… China’s fast development has led in cases to cut corners and lax safety standards, putting many of its signature developments under a new light.

Terminal 3 turns out to be no exception after the state-run China Daily reported that part of the terminal’s roof was ripped open by a strong wind on Tuesday. “Dear Tom Friedman, how’s ‘be more like China’ working out these days?” wrote one wag on Twitter, referring to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and his generally high regard for Chinese infrastructure projects.

Not so fast, says Shao Weiping, executive chief architect of Beijing Architectural Design and Research Institute, which worked with Foster & Partners on the project. Speaking to the China Daily, he said the damage could be the result of pieces improperly supplied or installed:

… “The metal roof technology used to build T3 was a mature one that has stood tests for more than 20 years,” he said, adding he personally believed that this could be more of a quality-related issue.

See also “Quality is Weightier than Mount Tai”; Reporters Allege Shady Building Practices via CDT. Another aspect of the same general problem is that skill development has frequently lagged behind the rush of construction. Poor maintenance has been blamed for problems with escalators on the Beijing subway, while inadequate training and other human error has been implicated in both the Shanghai Metro and Wenzhou high-speed rail crashes.

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Post tags: airport building, architecture, Beijing airport, construction project, overdevelopment, safety
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Transportation networks in China are known for congestion, and the same is true for the vehicles themselves. Long-distance buses routinely take on more passengers than the law permits. With a passenger capacity of 35 passengers, the bus was overloaded with 47 people when the fire broke out ….

Caixin interviewed a bus route operator who asked to be referred to as Xiao Hua and who said long-distance buses tend to be overloaded because private contractors operate on low profit margins ….

With the investigation still ongoing, one possible scenario links the cause of the explosion to flammable materials in the luggage trunk ignited by high temperatures from the engine located at the back of the bus ….

Police are still investigating who brought the explosives onboard. Many bus stations have installed screening devices for flammable, explosive and other hazardous goods, but the measures are of no use when bus conductors regularly solicit passengers from outside the stations.

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Post tags: accidents, fire, Henan, safety, transportation
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China’s top quality watchdog demanded local agencies overhaul the quality of escalators and elevators after a 13-year-old boy was killed when an ascending subway escalator suddenly reversed direction at the Beijing Zoo Station on subway line 4.

According to the Beijing bureau of quality and technical supervision, the escalator had a design defect and was not well maintained during regular checks ….

Latest official figures from the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine show more than 5 percent of elevators and escalators in use pose safety risks.

Experts said vicious market competition has led to inadequate training and a brain drain of maintenance workers ….

“They are only fixed when they stop working, which leaves huge hidden dangers,” Xu said.

The safety checks in Beijing are part of a nationwide campaign which has left 4,000 escalator and elevators out of operation. From an earlier China Daily report:

By the end of July, more than 10,000 escalators and elevators had been identified by local quality authorities as having potential safety problems, according to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ).

“After repairs and maintenance, more than 4,000 escalators or elevators remain suspended for use,” said the AQSIQ.

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“Poor quality, improper design or installation or maintenance of the glass door and the scorching weather are all possible causes for the incident,” said Lu Jinlong of the Shanghai Research Institute of Building Sciences.

Similar glass “explosions” or glass “bombs” falling off sides of high-rises have occurred frequently in the city during the past weeks, prompting concerns about the glass materials’ safety. A piece of glass on the 38th floor in the Shanghai International Finance Center broke into pieces on Wednesday ….

Meanwhile, a piece of glass in the One Lujiazui office tower broke on Monday, two months after a glass-shattering incident there damaged dozens of cars.

A glass platform barrier in Metro Line 10 suddenly exploded on Tuesday. An identical shield also shattered in Metro Line 11 on July 14.

And from Global Times on Friday:

Skyscraper owners and managers held the prime responsibility for the glass in their glass buildings, Deputy Mayor Shen Jun announced at a press conference on Wednesday.

“The city government must step up its efforts to prevent such accidents to minimize economic losses as well as injuries to residents,” he also said ….

The rate of exploding glass was about two windows in a 1,000, according to Fang, “too high odds to be ignored” for a metropolis like Shanghai ….

“The country’s technical standard does not meet that of the World Trade Organization,” Lu [Jinlong, also quoted by the Shanghai Daily] said.

“Although that does not necessarily mean that the glass walls are of poorer quality than those built by other more developed countries, Shanghai’s skyscrapers need more efficient and thorough safety checks to examine the glass walls’ quality.”

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Post tags: accidents, buildings, construction, safety, Shanghai, skyscrapers, world trade organization
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A year later, that foreign criticism of China’s food safety problems doesn’t seem so groundless. Now Chinese consumers are asking why the government can’t seem to get control of a problem like toxic foods, or even a specific contaminant like melamine that has now become painfully common. “Everyone has asked why this country that can send an astronaut into space and have the most successful Olympic Games cannot provide safe milk to its own children,” says Dali Yang, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. While Yang acknowledges that ethical failures in the Chinese dairy industry led to the current crisis, the ultimate blame still falls on the government. “Fundamentally it is an issue of government responsibility. In any society you can hope everyone acts with good intentions, but you cannot trust them to always do that,” he says. ” The greatest irony is that with all the international criticism last year, they knew there were problems. They did some spot checks, but the bureaucratic system didn’t pick this up as a significant issue.”

It is the spotty nature of the enforcement mechanism that is causing the biggest headaches.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that the use of dangerous substances in milk is an “open secret” in China’s dairy industry, while Chinese officials insist that recently discovered contaminated eggs are an “isolated case.”

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Post tags: dairy industry, food safety, product safety, safety
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Post tags: economic development, Human Rights, safety
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On October 23, People’s Daily interviewed Professor Wang Deming of the China University of Mining and Technology to gain a clearer picture of why these disasters take place with such alarming frequency.”

The full article is here.

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Post tags: mine safety, mines, safety
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The explosion occurred at 4:50 PM in the state-owned No. 1 coal mine of the Huangling Mining Co. as an estimated 85 miners were working under ground. Reports indicate that 65 miners were rescued, including five injured who are now hospitalized. Seven miners remain missing.”

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Many deaths go unrecorded because mine owners fear being punished and local officials in poorer regions are keen to keep open what is often one of the few sources of employment.

On top of that, coal, which dominates China’s huge mining industry, is a much-needed resource in the energy-hungry nation, providing some 70 percent of fuel needs. ”

The full CNN’s report is here.

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The World Health Organization presented its World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention to Chinese officials in Beijing Monday saying China has the most deadly roads. Some 1.2 million people die every year on roads around the globe, about 20 percent of them in China. ”

The full article is here on the VOA site.

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In this report, published on August 6, several whistle blowers from the plant have revealed their identities, with their pictures attached, and included photos documenting their allegations. The original Chinese article is here.

Thanks to Professor Yu Maochun, who has sent this startling report to CDN’s attention and also summarized the Epoch Times report in English. He wrote: “If this report is true, and there are ample reasons to believe it is, Chinese authorities have a lot of explaining to do to its own people and to the international community on nuclear safety, especially nuclear proliferation and nuclear export control. We may also find out from these whistle blowers which country or group the plant has sold uranium products to, which obviously has much relevance in today’s world.”

Here is Professor Yu’s summary: “One of China’s biggest uranium mining and enrichment plants in Gansu was closed by an order from Beijing in 2002 on account of uranium ore exhaustion. The entire plant was scheduled to close shop and hundreds of workers/engineers were let go. Beijing provided 270 million RMB to help settle the laid off workers.

The disgruntled workers soon began to organize and send a petition team to Beijing to accuse the local CCP bosses at the plant and in Gansu area of the following:

(...)
Read the rest of “Closed” uranium mine continuing to pollute and sell products internationally (227 words)

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