Advertisement
Safety in China
ChinaPolitics

China’s coal production on the rise, along with reports of mining accidents

  • Production for the first 11 months of 2019 is up nearly 5 per cent on the previous year, according to official figures
  • Mine operators accused of putting profits ahead of worker safety after spike in accidents

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
Rescuers carry a survivor of a flooding accident in a coal mine in Sichuan province last week. Photo: Xinhua
Keegan Elmerin BeijingandEcho Xie
China, the world’s biggest producer and user of coal, has built more coal-fired power plants, driving up demand for the fuel. As winter kicked in, demand spiked further and miners have been paying the price.
Fourteen coal miners were killed in an explosion in the southern Guizhou province on December 17. A day later, five others died when a mine flooded in neighbouring Sichuan.

Following the Guizhou deaths, the National Coal Mine Safety Supervision Bureau warned companies nationwide to pay stricter attention to safety. It said in the four weeks preceding the Guizhou blast, four coal mine accidents had left 43 dead.

It was worse than that, according to the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin. The group, an advocate for workers’ rights, uses news reports to compile a map of industrial accidents that cause fatalities or injuries. Its figures say 55 coal miners died in a dozen accidents in the same period.

Several hundred coal miners die in accidents in China each year, although that is far less than the thousands killed in deathtrap mines in the early 2000s. Official statistics on mining accidents and deaths in 2019 will not be available until early in 2020, but the figures that are available suggest accidents increased in the latter part of this year.

Advertisement