China Labour Bulletin is quoted in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher.
3 September 2012
By JAMES T. AREDDY
SHANGHAI—A spate of accidents has put the spotlight back on the fast-expanding Chinese coal industry, the world's deadliest for coal miners despite a measurably improved safety record in recent years.
A total of 76 people have been killed in three Chinese coal-mining accidents since Aug. 13, according to reports by the State Administration of Work Safety. In one of the worst accidents in recent years, 45 people were killed in an Aug. 29 mine explosion outside the city of Panzhihua in Sichuan province, while 14 people died in a blast Sunday in Jiangxi province.
China is the world's largest miner and consumer of coal, and has long had the deadliest mines. This partly reflects the difficulty of regulating 12,000 mines, and the fact that its coal veins are so deep underground.
Growing social awareness in China of workplace safety, and of the environment, represents an added political challenge to the ruling Communist Party, which faces increasingly loud public demands to deliver more than economic growth.
Last week, state-run Xinhua news agency said in a commentary headlined "Multiple accidents test CPC's governability" that 75,572 people lost their lives as a result of accidents last year. It said, "Every man-made accident, be it the collapse of a bridge [last] month or the bullet train collision last year—stems from something, and many suspect that dereliction of duty, a lack of proper supervision, abuse of power or corruption could be behind these accidents."
The coal industry is improving, analysts said. They credit continued focus on safety in resource-rich areas like Shanxi province for reducing mining's death toll in China to around 2,000 in 2011 from 3,786 in 2007 and nearly 7,000 in 2002, according to figures from Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin.
The latest accidents all occurred at relatively small pits, operated by owners who cater to China's giant appetite to fuel power plants and steel mills, but are Beijing's biggest challenges in enforcing safety rules. Analysts said these facilities often hire untrained labor and pay based on tonnage, leading to frequent deadly accidents.
China's 3.52 billion metric tons of output last year was almost half of the global total 7.695 billion tons, and 3.5 times that of the next biggest coal producer, the U.S., according to the BP Statistics Review of World Energy, encouraged by world prices that more than tripled in a decade.
The economic slowdown in China this year isn't seen significantly slowing its coal production, according to Barclays, which forecasts a 5.9% rise in output in 2012 to 3.6 billion metric tons.
Sustaining the big output numbers are numerous small producers that dominate the industry, despite efforts by Beijing to consolidate coal-mine ownership in fewer hands, particularly under large state-owned enterprises.
China's top eight mining groups accounted for only around 20% of national coal output in 2010, according to Xu Yi-chong, a professor of Australia's Griffith University in Brisbane, whereas in the U.S. just three companies produced 70%.
"This is the main problem," said Ms. Xu. She said small coal mines' safety and labor standards tend to be very low, while large mine owners tend to be more responsible. Large, government-run coal producers in China recorded a fatality rate of 0.28 per million metric tons mined in 2010 while small operations killed five times as many people, or 1.4 per ton. She says China's national average in 2010 was 0.75 deaths per million tons, down sharply from 7.6 deaths per million during the mid-1980s.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, 17 people died in U.S. coal-mining accidents last year. A 13th death in 2012 occurred on July 31 when a 43-year-old was crushed repairing a machine underground in West Virginia.
Policy makers have promoted China's safety efforts with carrots and sticks, firing officials after big accidents and using government subsidies to create incentives for good behavior.
One of the nation's largest miners, Shandong province-based Yanzhou Coal Mining Co.,for instance, says in its latest annual report that it has recorded a rate of zero fatalities per million tons of raw coal mined in each of the past five years. The biographies of its top executives highlight their training in worker safety and its financial accounts tally rising compliance costs, like a 50 yuan-per-metric-ton work-safety charge that applies to one of its big Shanxi mines.
"Credit has to go to the authorities in Shanxi and to some extent Inner Mongolia," says Geoffrey Crothall, director of communications at the China Labour Bulletin. "But the rest of the country hasn't gotten the same message."
That is a worry as coal mining presses into new areas that haven't been embarrassed into action as, analysts say, officials have been in coal-rich Shanxi. According to the Work Safety Administration, at least two people remain trapped underground after China's two latest mining accidents.
—Yang Jie contributed to this article.