From the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief:
In a rare disclosure of the enormous hidden cost of China‘s rapid economic development, the Chinese government acknowledged last week that “sudden public incidents“ such as industrial accidents, social safety accidents, and natural disasters are responsible for over one million casualties and the loss of six percent of GDP every year. Shocked by the recent explosion of a major petrochemical plant in Northeast China that caused large-scale pollution to the Songhua River and cut off water to over 10 million people for a week, and a series of large coalmine accidents, China is now debating not only how the system can better respond to disasters but also if the current development paradigm can be sustained.
