Full of graft, China mining breeds death -- and secrecy

ZHONGLOU, CHINA

When an underground fire killed 35 men at the bottom of a coal shaft last year, the telltale signs of another Chinese mining disaster were everywhere: Black smoke billowed into the sky, dozens of rescuers searched nine hours for survivors and sobbing relatives besieged the mine's iron gate.

But though the owner and local government officials took few steps to prevent the tragedy, they succeeded, almost completely, in concealing it.

For nearly three months, not a word leaked from the heart of China's coal belt about the July 14 explosion that racked the illegal mine, a 1,000-foot wormhole in Hebei Province, about 100 miles west of Beijing.

The mine owner paid off grieving families and cremated the miners' bodies, even when relatives wanted to bury them. Local officials pretended to investigate, then issued a false report. Journalists were bribed to stay silent. The mine shaft was sealed with truckloads of earth.

"It was so dark and evil in that place," said the wife of one miner who missed his shift that day and so was spared. "No one dared report the accident because the owner was so powerful."

The Lijiawa mine tragedy might still be an official non-event, but one brave soul reported the cover-up in September on an Internet chat site. The central government in Beijing stepped in, firing 25 local officials and putting 22 of them under criminal investigation. The results of the inquiry are expected this month.

Under China's authoritarian system, superiors reward subordinates for strict compliance with targets set from above, like reducing mine disasters. Should one occur, the incentive to hide it is often stronger than the reward for handling it well. A disaster on a bureaucrat's watch is almost surely a blot on his career. A scandal buried quietly may never be discovered.

China's lack of a free press, independent trade unions, citizen watchdog groups and other checks on official power makes cover-ups possible, even though the Internet makes it harder to suppress information completely.

Work-safety officials in Beijing complain that even more than in other industries, death tolls from accidents at coal mines are often ratcheted down or not reported at all. That is because of the risky profits to be made -- by businessmen and corrupt local officials -- exploiting dangerous coal seams with temporary, unskilled workers.

Astronomical death rate

Just two weeks after the Lijiawa disaster, for example, officials in neighboring Shanxi Province said 11 people had been killed in natural landslide. After another Internet-lodged complaint, investigators discovered 41 villagers had been buried under a torrent of rocks and waste from an iron mine.

To be sure, the mines are much safer than just six years ago. Huang Yi, deputy administrator of the work safety agency, said stricter scrutiny, regulations and the closing of 12,000 mines had cut the death rate by three-fourths since 2002. "There are some illegal coal mines that still operate because they are protected by local officials," Huang said. But, he added, "There are fewer and fewer."

Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, argues that Beijing's top-down approach can only do so much to make local officials more accountable.

"We don't have the grass-roots democracy; we don't have independent labor unions; we don't have checks and balances; we don't have any system of official accountability," he said.

Work-safety officials are trying to fill the gap with hot lines, a website link, and even rewards to informants. But in a country that relies on coal for most of its electricity, powerful financial incentives lie behind unsafe mines.