74 lives in one accident: another example of human cost in China’s rapid economic development
Tens of thousands continue to die in workplace accidents each year as safety continues to be sacrificed for speed
This week’s construction site disaster at a power plant in Jiangxi has again exposed the high human cost of the mainland’s breakneck development.
Authorities were still investigating why a scaffolding platform supporting construction cranes collapsed, killing 74 construction workers in Yichun on November 24 but observers said safety might have been sacrificed in the rush to build a cooling tower, a key part of the US$10 billion power plant that local officials were keen to complete.
The collapse is among the deadliest industrial accidents on the mainland, with the death toll one higher than the official number of fatalities from a landslide of construction waste in Shenzhen in December. An explosion at a chemical warehouse in Tianjin last summer killed at least 165 people.
Beijing has vowed repeatedly to improve workplace safety but, despite a general improvement, tens of thousands of people still die in workplace accidents every year. In all, 66,182 people died in 281,576 workplace accidents last year, an average of 181 deaths a day, according to Xinhua.
Fang Dongping, director of the Tsinghua-Gammon Construction Safety Research Centre, said Beijing’s safety rules were strict on paper but were often neglected on the ground, where speed was valued above quality. “In China, you seldom see builders who are not rushing to get projects done,” Fang said. “The faster companies promise to complete them, the more likely they are to be awarded the contracts.”