China’s unquenchable thirst for energy is exposing Beijing’s inability to keep its workers safe – and that could spell problems for the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy, experts warned last night.
More than 2,000 investigations are being carried out in China’s coal mines after the deaths of hundreds of miners following a decision to drastically increase production.
Though China’s mines are known to be among the deadliest in the world, accidents and deaths had been falling steadily in the decade to 2021, after Beijing shut down excess mining capacity, reduced coal burning and strengthened safety checks.
But nationwide power shortage and a quadrupling of domestic prices led to a decision to increase output by 9 percent to a record 4.5 billion tons in 2022.
Soaring global coal prices and energy supply disruption in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also prompted Beijing to seek to improve its energy security.
This has meant digging deeper than ever before.
“China is mining at a rate of 10 to 25 meters deeper each year, leaving miners facing more complicated scientific and technical problems,” said Yuan Liang, a coal mining professor at Anhui University of Science and Technology.
In 2022, 245 people died in 168 accidents, according to official figures. The death toll represented a six-year high and was pegged at China’s called for higher coal output.
Last month, at least 10 miners in the city of Pingdingshan died. In December 12 people were killed and 13 injured in a mining accident on the outskirts of Jixi city in northeastern Heilongjiang province.
Eleven people were killed in November in an accident at another coal mine in the same province.
And in September, at least 16 people were killed in a coal mine fire in southwest China’s Guizhou.
China amended its criminal law in 2021 to include punishments of managers at mines involved in accidents due to overproduction.
Last night Dr Zeno Leoni, Affiliate of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, said: “China is facing a lot of conundrums like this because its fast growth has meant that it has developed unevenly. It is advanced in some fields and very behind the West in others.”
He added: “We tend to view authoritarian countries as strong. But in reality, they are more inflexible too. In a democracy, one party replaces another and there is little systemic change. in autocracies if something happens the system breaks.
“Protests are increasing in China. This is something we are not used to seeing. Xi Jinping’s Zero-Covid policy was overturned because of protests.
“XI needs to find a solution, not because he is concerned about the safety of his miners, but because he is concerned about the legitimacy of the party.”
