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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (2270)	12/28/2003 10:24:57 AM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

Blood on China’s profits Last week’s gas explosion has highlighted how cheap lives are in the world’s biggest country. From Hector Mackenzie in Beijing The New Year working safety clampdown demanded by the Chinese authorities came too late for the more than 200 people confirmed dead yesterday following a gas blowout that spewed a cloud of death across 30 square miles. While the gas field disaster northeast of China’s heavily populated Chongqing municipality described as “unpreceden ted” by a local work safety official, it is only the latest in a shocking catalogue of workplace accidents which account for around 330 lives a day in the world’s most populous nation – and those are just in the officially recorded government figures. With hundreds of people still receiving treatment for acid burns and chronic respiratory failure, the only thing certain is that the death toll will rise further. Fourteen camps have been established to accommodate more than 41,000 people evacuated from the area. Hospitals have treated more than 9000 people suffering from poisoning in various degrees. The vast majority of those killed by acid burns or respiratory failure, following exposure to the concentrated mix of natural gas and sulphurated hydrogen released from the Chuandongbei gas field, were locals. Thirty-nine of the victims so far identified were children under 10. The disaster hit just a week after authorities demanded a clampdown on workplace safety. According to official statistics, 120,890 people were killed in workplace accidents up to the end of November this year. Many of them were working for a pittance, in dangerous environments, for employers who knowingly break safety regulations. The pledge of stricter measures was made by state administration of work safety director Wang Xianzheng. His is an unenviable job in a country where 19 coal miners lose their lives each day and where a depressing litany of accidents ranges from explosions in illegally operated mines and firework factories to fatal falls by untrained rural workers installing high-rise air conditioners in the fast-developing cities. China, the world’s fastest-growing economy, recently issued its first state regulation on construction safety. With many construction companies operating illegally, pursuing profits using untrained workers and taking no safety measures, the country is paying a heavy price for its rapid development. But because labour is dirt cheap – the average air-conditioning instal ler earns around £50 per month – and because migrant labourers in particular are desperate enough to risk their lives at that price, the task of making a big impact on those depressing statistics is enormous. In a country where statistics are often taken with a grain of salt, even official reckonings of the job at hand are tinged with realism. Last month China set itself a target of lowering deaths in coalmining accidents from the present 7000 a year to 5000 a year by 2007. While it might seem shocking that such a high death rate can be tolerated, only 3200 of more than 25,000 mines are state-owned. The rest are run by townships and small private oper ators, often illegally and almost always flouting safety measures in pursuit of profit. Xianzheng reported that coal mining accidents had killed 4620 people in the first nine months of this year. His target is for the death toll to be reduced from four per million tons of coal produced to three, and the number of fatal disasters involving 10 miners or more to be reduced from 60 a year to 40 by 2007. While those cold statistics make depressing reading, snapshots of the reality of life hacking out fuel hundreds of feet under the ground are bone-chillingly grim. Earlier this year a mine owner in the poverty-stricken Gansu province was detained after covering up deaths. Ma Zhongguo reported five deaths from carbon dioxide poisoning in his Lanzhou mine following an accident. Police later put the total number at 19. The shocking truth emerged after an investigation team was sent to probe the matter. Zhongguo later admitted covering up 14 deaths by giving around £5000 to the relatives of the dead workers in exchange for their silence. What seems like a disturbingly low price to place on a human life is a king’s ransom to someone existing on less than a dollar a day – and who can be replaced within an hour by scores of willing substitutes. And who could point the finger at families who know they are virtually powerless to pursue compensation through legal means? One observer of China’s workplace practices said: “Let’s try and put this into perspective. I have a friend who tripped on a loose step outside her office in London last year. Her company immediately agreed to pay her £7000 in compensation for her twisted ankle. She required hospital attention but was walking again within a week. She used the cash as a down-payment on her flat and is delighted with how things turned out. “It’s difficult to compare that with a country which is racing from a planned to a market economy at a rate unprecedented in history, and in which labour is so cheap. Someone here crippled for life by a fall from a scaffold might get a few hundred pounds – if they’re lucky. Safety measures simply have to improve, not on humanitarian but on economic grounds. With a market economy and World Trade Organisation membership come certain responsibilities. “The first step must be to start offering people basic protection at work. That’s still a long way off for millions of people in China.” 28 December 2003 sundayherald.com