How many more people have to die before China gets to grips with the root causes of man-made disasters?

Not a day goes by, it seems, without a man-made industrial incident in China. And every few months, at the very least, the country witnesses a massive disaster that kills scores of people.

As the world was seeing in 2015, 36 revellers were killed in a stampede on Shanghai’s scenic Bund. On July 1, more than 440 people died when a cruise ship capsized on the Yangtze River in heavy rain. On August 12, over 173 people were killed and more than 700 injured in a series of explosions at a chemical warehouse in Tianjin (天津), which also forced over 6,000 people to leave their homes. And more than 80 people are feared dead after a massive landslide of earth and construction waste buried buildings at an industrial estate in Shenzhen on December 20.

READ MORE: Shenzhen landslide aftermath: official who rubber-stamped waste dump that triggered disaster takes his own life

Of course, other countries suffer man-made incidents. But as the world’s most populous nation and leading manufacturer, China has more than its fair share. Add to this the fact that the world’s second-largest economy has been building vast numbers of large-scale infrastructure projects which only increase the potential for such incidents.

Many of China’s problems are unique. First, China tops the world for these grim statistics. Last year, some 70,000 people died in work-related accidents in the country, compared with less than 5,000 in the US, the world’s second-largest manufacturer. With nearly 200 deaths per day, China’s on-the-job death rate is a dozen times higher than that of most industrialised nations.

Second, such incidents often occur due to the flouting of regulations that could have been detected and prevented beforehand, but were not. For instance, Shenzhen media have reported several times in the past few years that companies were illegally dumping construction waste as the legal dumps were all full. But the alarm bells got little attention from officials responsible for industrial safety.