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Gas blast explosion kills 203 miners in China
John Taylor
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
15 February 2005
MARK COLVIN: The massive growth of China's economy has again taken its toll in blood. More than 200 coal miners have died in China's worst mining accident in decades.
State media reports that the men died after an underground gas explosion in a colliery in northeastern China yesterday afternoon. Mining accidents and deaths happen almost daily in China, but their severity is getting worse as the surging economy drives booming demand for fuel.
China Correspondent John Taylor.
JOHN TAYLOR: China's mining industry is notorious, as both the world's biggest and most deadly. The latest incident only reinforces its disaster-plagued reputation.
Around three o'clock yesterday afternoon, a gas blast 240 metres underground tore through the Sujiawan colliery near Fuxin city in northeastern China. Rescue workers rushed to the scene, but it appears there was little they could do. Today at least 203 miners were confirmed dead.
A spokesman for the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety Supervision told state television that all coalmines in China with a high risk of gas explosion have been ordered to stop producing. Safety officials will also later today hold an emergency video-conference.
As the world's fastest growing major economy, China relies on coal to meet about 70 per cent of its energy needs. Demand is booming, and so is supply and profits.
But critics and miners say lives are being sacrificed in the quest for energy. China last year produced 35 per cent of the world's coal but reported 80 per cent of global deaths in colliery accidents. Officially about 6,000 miners died last year.
The China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based labour rights group focusing on China, says that figure is a gross underestimate.
Research Director Robin Munro says an official has admitted it to the group.
ROBIN MUNRO: One of our staff, one of our senior staff from China Labor Bulletin, was at a conference in Geneva last year, and he made a speech on the ongoing catastrophe of China's mining industry. And he cited the official government figure of ... last year I think it was more than 6,000.
After that meeting a senior official from the Chinese Government who had been present came to him privately and rather scoffingly said to him in private - "oh, you think you're impressing people with that figure that the Government puts out. Actually the real figure is more like 20,000 or more every year."
JOHN TAYLOR: Mining accidents and fatalities happen almost every week somewhere in China, but the severity of them is getting worse. In November 300 men died in two accidents.
Only last month China's Premier Wen Jiabao ordered better work safety conditions throughout China's mining industry.
"We must pay greater importance to work safety and not let this kind of tragedy happen again," Premier Wen said.
But Robin Munro believes the Government really doesn't care.
ROBYN MUNROE: We know the reasons. It's the economic incentives to produce more coal with no disregard for the miners' lives.
JOHN TAYLOR: There's also, though, limited technology that's being used as well?
ROBiN MUNRO: Limited technology... limited technology is one factor, but with the correct safety provisions and regulations and regime, that technological disadvantage does not need to translate into anything like this number of miners' deaths every year.
MARK COLVIN: Robin Munro of the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, with our Beijing correspondent John Taylor.