The Political Economy of Coal Mine Disasters in China: Your Rice Bowl or Your Life*

Tim Wright

ABSTRACT The conditions of industrial workers have been increasingly eroded in post-Mao China. This article examines conditions in coal mining: the industry with the worst health and safety performance in China. After briey outlining Chinas record, the article analyses the fundamental causes of the high level of accidents. Despite many regulations on mine safety, governments at all levels have had great difculty in enforcing the law. Because of the important role of township and village mines in local development, often in areas with few other sources of income, powerful forces work for the survival of many unsafe small mines. Indeed, the safety discourse in Chinas press partly reects the interests of the state mines attempting to reduce competition by foisting (higher) safety costs on the small mines. The problem of coal safety will not be solved until Chinas rural population has other, better and safer, ways to increase family incomes so that they have the option to refuse to risk their lives.

In most societies, changes in the working conditions of the industrial labour force closely reect the position of workers within the broader political economy. Theo Nichols inuential work has argued that industrial health and safety, one important aspect of working conditions, reects the balance between labour and capital in a society.1 He describes his work as an attempt to locate industrial injuries within the structure and dynamics of capitalist society.2 Such an approach can also throw light on Chinas transitional economy as it moves from socialist planning towards a capitalist market. Fatalities from coal mining accidents are among the most important health and safety issues in China.3 Coal mining accounts for less than 4 per cent of the broadly dened industrial workforce but over 45 per cent of industrial fatalities.4 This is a serious embarrassment to the leadership, with the head of Chinas safety bureaucracy admitting in 2001 that
* I would like to thank Chris Bramall, Beverley Hooper, and participants in the School of East Asian Studies seminar series and the European Association for Chinese Studies Conference in Moscow for useful comments and suggestions on this article. 1. Theo Nichols, The Sociology of Industrial Injury (London: Mansell Publishing Limited, 1997), pp. 98112. 2. Ibid. p. 10. 3. The article does not attempt to cover mining-related diseases, such as pneumoconiosis, of which there are over half a million victims. See Tony Fung Kam Lam, Occupational safety and health in China, Asian Labour Update, No. 39 (AprilJune 2001), http:// www.amrc.org.hk/alu/Alu39/013906.html (16 April 2003). 4. Tabulation of the 2000 Population Census of the Peoples Republic of China (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2002), Vol. 2, p. 885; Fu Jianhua, 2001 nian quanguo meikuang anquan shengchan zhuangkuang ji dianxing shigu anli fenxi (The safety situation in Chinas coal mines in 2001 and an analysis of typical accidents), http://www.chinasafety.gov.cn/ hy200204081.htm (10 April 2002). The China Quarterly, 2004

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The China Quarterly fatality rates were eleven times higher than in Russia, and 15 times higher than in India.5 The regular occurrence of coal mining disasters has attracted widespread and sometimes sceptical press coverage both within and outside China. The nations top leadership has called for action; for example, during New Year 2003, Vice-Premier Wen Jiabao shared dumplings with coal miners 500 metres underground and urged ofcials to give priority to improving coal safety.6 This article builds on Nichols insights to argue that the structure and dynamics of Chinas socialist market economy are crucial in explaining its dismal coal safety record. The transition from socialist planning to a largely market economy has involved a reduction in the states commitment to Chinas urban working class. The workers have lost much of the previous secure employment, relatively good working conditions and political prominence that they enjoyed in the old state owned enterprises (SOEs).7 Both urban workers and the large number of new rural workers in the township and village enterprises (TVEs) have faced increasing competitive pressures on their wages and conditions, and are often seen as losers in the process of Chinas economic reform.8 Chinas complex political economy encompasses a wide range of industrial operations from large-scale relatively modernized enterprises in the cities to tiny, unmechanized, operations in the villages. Thus, Chinas working conditions reect international precedents ranging from pre-industrialization to post-Second World War capitalism. In his study of mining safety in Belgium, Leboutte identies three stages in the history of mining accidents9: a pre-industrial phase when there is hardly any mechanization, when workings are small and scattered and accidents are of a generally small scale; a phase of industrialization, when the scale of work increases and the danger of large accidents is therefore greater, but when those accidents invite ofcial intervention; and a phase of mechanization, when better safety provisions are implemented and machines take over many of the most dangerous tasks, so that the accident rate falls. China is experiencing all three stages at once, from small-scale, almost individual, pits in the villages, through the bigger TVE mines, which approximate the phase of industrialization, to the large SOEs, which represent that of mechanization. After outlining Chinas record in coal mining safety and briey
5. Bi fubai geng weixian de shi shenme? Shanxi meikuang shigu pinfa yuanyin touxi (What is more dangerous than corruption? An analysis of the reasons for the frequent accidents in Shanxi coal mines), Sanlian shenghuo zhoukan (Life Weekly), 5 December 2001, http://news.sina.com.cn/c/20011205/413304.html (19 December 2001). 6. China Central Television, 2 February 2003, http://202.108.249.200/english/news/ China/Politics/20030202/100089.html (2 April 2003). 7. See for example Meei-shia Chen and Anita Chan, Chinas market economics in command: footwear workers health in jeopardy, International Journal of Health Services, Vol. 29, No. 4 (1999), p. 798. 8. See Greg OLeary (ed.), Adjusting to Capitalism: Chinese Workers and the State (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998); Dorothy J. Solinger, Labour market reform and the plight of the laid-off proletariat, The China Quarterly, No. 170 (June 2002), pp. 304326. 9. Rene Leboutte, Mortalite par accident dans les mines de charbon en Belgique aux XIXe-XXe sie ` cles, Revue du Nord, Vol. 73, No. 293 (1991), pp. 73435.

The Political Economy of Coal Mine Disasters Table 1: Fatality Rates in Chinese Coal Mines in International Context
Period United States India (Coal India, large mines) Britain China (large state mines) China (all mines) China (TVE mines) 19922002 19922001 19631979 19922001 19922001 19922001 Number Deaths/ Deaths/ Deaths/1000 of deaths year million tons workers* 434 1,020 1,922 6,220 59,543 41,120 39 128 113 622 5,954 4,112 0.04 0.50 0.75 1.19 4.99 9.13 0.31 0.32 0.33 0.53 2.20

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Note: * 199298 for China; unweighted average 199599 for India. Sources: For the Chinese gures see sources to Table 2; National Coal Board, Statistical Tables 1978/9 (London: National Coal Board, 1979), pp. 34; United States Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration, Coal fatalities for 1900 through 2002, http://www.msha.gov/centurystats/coalstats.htm (24 June 2003); US Department of Energy, Annual US coal supply and demand, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/a7tab.html (24 June 2003); Table, No. of accidents, fatalities & fatality rates (19751999), http://www.coalindia.nic.in/safety.htm (23 June 2003); Government of India, Ministry of Coal and Mines, Department of Coal, Annual report, 20012002, ch. 12, http://coal.nic.in/ chap120102.pdf, p. 6 (27 November 2002).

examining the regulatory environment, this article analyses in greater detail the reasons for Chinas poor safety record in both SOE and TVE mines,10 with particular reference to changes in the broader political economy. Chinas Coal Safety Record As with other Chinese statistics, those for coal mining fatalities are unreliable.11 Mine owners and local governments have many incentives to conceal accidents, and this has become a major concern in Chinas press.12 Actual numbers of fatalities are almost certainly much higher than those reported. Nevertheless, no conceivable correction of the gures would be likely to throw doubt on four key conclusions: Chinas mines are the most dangerous in the world; fatalities vary systematically between different types of mine; a safety record that was improving in the
10. Unless otherwise stated, SOE mines refers to the mines previously under direct central control. In 1998 control over these mines was devolved to the provinces; see Elspeth Thomson, The Chinese Coal Industry: An Economic History (London: Routledge/Curzon, 2003), p. 165. There was also a smaller sector under county or provincial state control. 11. For the choice of fatality gures as an indicator of mine safety see Nichols, Industrial Injury, pp. 7, 126. 12. See for example Xinhua, Yinman zhenxiang zhuzhou weinu e: bi meikuang shigu geng kepa de shijiu renxin (Colluding in concealing reality even more agonizing than coal mining accidents), http://news.sina.com.cn/c/20020519/1835580002.html (23 May 2002).

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The China Quarterly 1980s largely ceased to do so from the mid-1990s; and China has failed to prevent the incidence of major mining disasters. As Table 1 shows, Chinas fatality rate is very high by international standards.13 Reecting the highly differentiated and generally backward level of mechanization in Chinese mines, current fatality rates nd their comparators in earlier periods of European history: even for SOE mines, fatality rates per million tons of output have been running at around 50 per cent higher than in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, while those in TVE mines are more reminiscent of Belgium in the early 20th century or of Britain in the third quarter of the 19th.14 Secondly, fatality rates vary widely between different types of mine. As Table 2 shows, the large, centrally controlled state mines have by far the lowest rates of fatalities. Mines run by state organs at county or provincial level are substantially less safe. Finally, although the International Labour Organization has found little evidence to say whether small-scale mining is more dangerous than large-scale mining,15 Chinas generally small TVE mines have registered fatality rates around seven or eight times higher than the large state mines. Thirdly, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the safety record of all types of mine particularly the SOEs during the 1980s was improving, though the growing proportion of the total industry accounted for by TVE mines slowed overall progress.16 As Table 2 indicates, however, this improvement seems to have ceased, or at best slowed, in the 1990s.17 Finally, since 1994 China has experienced an annual average of more than two major disasters, each costing more than 50 lives. This indicates that China has failed to solve safety problems overcome long ago in Europe. In Britain over a century ago, the introduction of safety lamps and the increased insistence on mechanical ventilation in gassy mines sharply reduced the incidence both of gas or coal dust explosions and of large-scale disasters.18 In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both the number and the percentage of deaths caused by explosions fell almost
13. The extraordinarily high productivity of US coal mines, most of which are open-cast, means that death rates per million tons are very low. Accidents per worker are, however, quite high, reecting an overall poor safety record; see Peter Dorman, Markets and Mortality: Economics, Dangerous Work, and the Value of Human Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 2225. 14. Roy Church, The History of the British Coal Industry, Volume 3: 18301913: Victorian Pre-eminence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 586; Leboutte, Mortalite , p. 711. 15. International Labour Organization, Social and Labour Issues in Small-scale Mines (Geneva: International Labour Ofce, 1999), p. 13. 16. Zhongguo laodong renshi nianjian (1949.101987) (Chinese Labour and Personnel Yearbook, October 19491987) (Beijing: Laodong renshi chubanshe, 1989), p. 802; Dangdai Zhongguo de laodong baohu (Labour Protection in Contemporary China) (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo chubanshe, 1992), p. 170. 17. The apparent very sharp increase in fatality rates in the TVE mines was arithmetically the product of a basically constant number of fatalities and a decline in output from almost 600 million tons in 1995 to around 250 million tons in 2001. It is likely that the decline in output is considerably over-stated. 18. John Braithwaite, To Punish or Persuade: Enforcement of Coal Mine Safety (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985), pp. 15, 1718.

The Political Economy of Coal Mine Disasters Table 2: Fatality Rates in Chinese Coal Mines, 19702002
Fatalities/million tons Key state owned mines All fatalities 7.11 4.53 1.43 1.83 1.67 1.59 1.26 1.08 Large mine Local state fatalities owned only mines 1.51 1.19 1.26 10.50 10.19 9.06 4.73 4.16 4.63 3.79 3.13 Township and village mines 9.03 16.88 12.07 7.91 9.31 14.82 11.73 9.62

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Year/s 1970 1980 19811985 19861990 1990 19921995 19962000 2001 2002 2003

All mines 8.20 8.17 7.55 6.89 6.76 4.95 5.06 5.20 4.64 4.17

Notes: For the years 1992 to 2001, the gures are my own calculations from data on casualties and on output; sometimes these differ slightly from other gures in Chinese sources. There are separate gures for accidents in small pits operated by state mines only from 1994. These small pits were (supposed to have been) closed in 2001. Sources: Wang Qingyi, Zhongguo meitan gongye: yanbian ji qianjing (shang) (Chinas coal industry: development and prospects [1]) Zhongguo meitan (China Coal), Vol. 27, No. 1 (January 2001), p. 11; Li Wenjun, Quanguo meikuang anquan shengchan zhuangkuang fenxi ji fazhan duice (An analysis of the safety situation in Chinas coal mines, and proposals for future development), Zhongguo meitan, Vol. 27, No. 6 (June 2001), p. 53; Zhongguo meitan gongye nianjian (Chinese Coal Industry Yearbook) 19942000; Guojia meikuang anquan jiancha ju, anquan jiancha si, 2000 nian 112 yue quanguo meikuang anquan shengchan qingkuang (The safety situation in Chinas coal mines, January to December 2000), http://www.chinacoal-safety.gov.cn/aqtj6.htm (31 October 2001); Fu Jianhua, 2001 nian quanguo meikuang anquan shengchan zhuangkuang ji dianxing shigu anli fenxi (The safety situation in Chinas coal mines in 2001 and an analysis of typical accidents), http://www.chinasafety.gov.cn/hy200204081.htm (10 April 2002); Zhongguo meitan bao (China Coal News), 16 January 2003, http://www.cinic.org.cn/img/disp.asp?id 3&baoshe zhongguomeitanbao&banci 1 (16 January 2003); Quanguo meikuang anquan shengchan dianhua huiyi 1 yue 14 ri zhaokai (National coal mine safety telephone conference opens, 14 January), http://www.chinacoal-safety.gov.cn/zhengwuxinxi/2004 01/14/content_1638.htm (14 January 2004).

continuously, from an average of 263 a year (25.4 per cent of the total) in 187382 to 52 a year (5.3 per cent) in 192332, while most fatalities came to occur as a result of roof falls and involved only a small number of workers at a time.19 By contrast, explosions have continued to occur regularly in China, causing heavy loss of life. Since 1991, gas explosions have caused between 71 and 83 per cent of fatalities in accidents involving three
19. P.E.H. Hair, Mortality from violence in British Coal-Mines, 180050, Economic History Review, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1968), p. 554.

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The China Quarterly Table 3: Proximate Causes of Coal Mining Fatalities in China in the 1990s and in Europe, 18731932
Percentage of total fatalities China, 19941999 Cause Explosions Roof falls Coal transport Others Total Large SOEs 48.8 29.1 6.8 15.3 41.2 27.2 15.4 16.2 TVEs 52.9 27.1 4.9 15.1 UK 18731932 13.0 50.7 19.3 17.1 Belgium 18811913 17.7 39.0 15.9 23.7

Notes: These gures were not all compiled on exactly the same basis. Sources: Chinese Coal Industry Yearbook, 19962000; Mines Department, Eighteenth Annual Report of the Secretary for Mines for the Year Ended 31st December, 1938 (London: HMSO, 1940), p. 207; Rene Leboutte, Mortalite par accident dans les mines de charbon en Belgique aux XIXe-XXe sie ` cles, Revue du Nord, Vol. 73, No. 293 (1991), p. 719.

workers or more.20 As shown in Table 3, even in the SOE sector explosions account for a much higher proportion of total fatalities than in early 20th-century Europe. Still more vulnerable are the larger TVE mines, reecting Lebouttes phase of industrialization, with substantial numbers of workers working in a relatively un-mechanized and unregulated environment. In Guizhou between 1966 and 1985 gas caused 70 per cent of fatalities in TVE mines and only 27 per cent in SOE mines; roof-falls were responsible for 16 per cent and 34 per cent respectively.21

The Role of Government Regulation In the United States and Britain, state regulation brought about longterm reductions in fatality rates.22 After reviewing neo-classical theories arguing that regulation will only make everyone worse off, Dorman concludes that it has consistently been the most effective strategy for improving the lot of the worst-off workers.23 In China since 1949 the state has been closely concerned with safety in the mining industry. As the chief engineer of Chinas state mines wrote: In the darkness of pre-communist China, the safety of coal miners had no guarantee. But
20. Zhongguo meitan bao (China Coal News) (hereafter ZMB), 29 August 2002, http://www.cinic.org.cn/img/disp.asp?id 2&baoshe zhongguomeitanbao &banci 1 (2 September 2002). 21. Guizhou sheng zhi: meitan gongye zhi (Gazetteer of Guizhou: The Coal Industry) (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe, 1989), p. 240. 22. Braithwaite, To Punish or Persuade, p. 83; Nichols, Industrial Injury, p. 79. 23. Dorman, Markets and Mortality, p. 128.

The Political Economy of Coal Mine Disasters after 1949 the working class became the masters of the country, and coal mining safety was given a high priority.24 The narrative on government policy and legislation on coal mining safety therefore closely follows that on Chinas broader political development.25 During the 1950s, new institutions were established, legislation enacted and accidents sharply reduced, but the Great Leap Forward led to the neglect of safety work in a rush for production. After a short-lived improvement in the early 1960s, the politics of the Cultural Revolution again led to neglect of safety work and a higher accident rate. After the beginning of reform, the basic policies, laws and institutions for coal safety were re-established during the 1980s, and have been further rened in the 1990s and beyond.26 Among the hierarchy of laws and regulations in force, the Labour Law (1994), the Mineral Resources Law (1996) and the Coal Law (1996) are the most broad-ranging. The Mining Safety Law (1992) and the Mining Safety Implementation Regulations (1996) are more specic. The Coal Mining Safety Inspection Regulations (2000), the Methods of Managing Coal Production Permits (1994), the Regulations for Managing Township and Village Mines (1994), the Coal Mine Safety Rules (1992, new set of rules in force from November 2001) and the Small Coal Mine Safety Rules (1996) stipulate more detailed requirements for safety. Even this list does not exhaust all the various pieces of legislation, and in most cases local regulations supplement the national laws. These laws cover two broad areas: technology and management.27 They stipulate minimum technological standards, such as the need for proper ventilation involving at least two shafts (one for the ingress of air, one for the outow) in order to reduce the incidence of explosions. In terms of management, they require the establishment of safety departments under the direct leadership of the line managers and a clear system of responsibility for safety, and specify a role for the trade unions and procedures for reporting and dealing with accidents. Finally, a series of government inspection institutions at all levels monitor and enforce the implementation of the regulations. A range of penalties, both administrative and criminal, back up the laws. Even without any accident having occurred, mine inspectors can issue warnings, impose nes, recommend the closure of mines, or request

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24. Zhao Quanfu, Caiqu kexue zhili cuoshi nuli shixian meikuang anquan shengchan (Actively promote coal mine safety by adopting scientic measures), in Peng Shiji and Feng Weimin (eds.), Zhongguo meitan gongye sishi nian (Forty Years of the Chinese Coal Industry) (Beijing: Meitan gongye chubanshe, 1990), p. 96. 25. See for example ibid. and Dangdai Zhongguo de meitan gongye (The Coal Industry in Contemporary China) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1988), pp. 23139. 26. The Coal Industry in Contemporary China, pp. 23537; Labour Protection in Contemporary China, pp. 178180; ZMB, 18 October 2001, http://202.84.17.111/baoshe/ mtb/20011018/GB/mtb^2976^1^mtb101819.btk (19 October 2001). 27. Zhou Qiping, Shilun meikuang anquan shengchan fa tixi (On the legislative system for coal mining safety), Meitan jingji yanjiu (Studies on the Economy of Coal), August 2001, pp. 2324; Labour Protection in Contemporary China, pp. 178180.

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The China Quarterly the authorities to impose administrative or legal penalties.28 During a province-wide safety inspection, for example, the Henan safety ofce issued a small number of on-the-spot nes, a much larger number of orders to rectify the situation, plus 24 orders to stop work on the coalface concerned and 36 orders to stop using pieces of equipment.29 Severe criminal and other sanctions are also frequently imposed after accidents30: for example, after an accident in Zhongyang county, Shanxi in November 2001, mine ofcers were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from three to seven years.31

The Political Economy of Coal Mining Fatalities Despite the efforts of the government and Dormans argument for the effectiveness of regulation, Chinas accident rate has remained worryingly high. Geology and technology have played some part: 48 per cent of Chinas SOE mines have a high level of gas, and the increasing depth of the mines has contributed to the growing proportion of deaths due to explosions.32 Nevertheless, European experience has shown that these problems are largely soluble, and Chinas failure yet to solve them reects broader political and economic considerations. In a general theoretical sense, the determinants of industrial safety can be analysed on a number of levels. Even abstracting from theorists who blame the victims for accident proneness or carelessness (one common issue is that of workers smoking underground), organizational and communication problems are often cited as the causes of specic accidents.33 However, what Nichols calls the determinants of the determinants can mostly be found in the political and economic system, and in the struggle between different groups within that system.34 Even Braithwaite, who emphasizes organizational issues, admits that corporate violations (of

28. Wu Yanyun, Qiantan meikuang anquan jiancha zhong de xingzheng chufa wenti (On administrative sanctions in coal safety inspection), Zhongguo meitan, Vol. 27, No. 5 (May 2001), pp. 5051. 29. ZMB 14 March 2002, http://202.84.17.111/baoshe/mtb/20020314/GB/ mtb^3044^1^mtb031413.btk (15 March 2002) 30. Braithwaite, however, believes that it is far more important to impose penalties for violating safety regulations in the absence of an accident; indeed, he recommends against prosecution after an accident (on the grounds that the social opprobrium after naming and shaming will be so strong). Braithwaite, To Punish or Persuade, p. 140. 31. ZMB 19 January 2002, http://202.84.17.111/baoshe/mtb/20020119/GB/ mtb^3025^2^mtb011923.htm (22 January 2002). 32. Wang Xianzheng, Yi fangzhi wasi zaihai wei zhongdian kaichuang meikuang anquan shengchan gongzuo xin jumian (A new situation in coal safety focusing on avoiding gas disasters), ZMB, 31 August 2002, http://www.cinic.org.cn/img/disp.asp?id 1&baoshe zhongguomeitanbao &banci 2 (3 September 2002). 33. See for example Braithwaite, To Punish or Persuade, p. 39; ZMB, 24 October 2000, http://www.cinic.com.cn/mtb/20001024/GB/mtb^2784^1^mtb102413.htm (26 October 2000). 34. Nichols, Industrial Injury, pp. 1112, 103 and passim; Michael Wallace, Dying for coal: the struggle for health and safety conditions in American coal mining, 193082, Social Forces, Vol. 66, No. 2 (December 1987), pp. 336364.

The Political Economy of Coal Mine Disasters safety regulations) lie more in the domain of calculated risks taken by rational people.35 The incidence of fatalities in Chinese coal mines has been intimately connected with the countrys political economy. The improvement in coal safety after 1949 reected the establishment of a relatively privileged status group of urban state workers.36 Although accident rates in SOEs in Maos China were certainly higher than those in later periods, the mechanization of the large mines in the context of relatively soft budget constraints had at least the potential substantially to improve safety.37 Political movements rather than economic uctuations led to temporary reversals of this trend during the pre-reform era. In the post-Mao period, Chinas political economy has centrally involved the rise of rural industry the TVE sector using Chinas massive reserve army of labour to produce cheap goods with low-cost technology to compete in world and domestic markets. As Anita Chan has documented, such enterprises tend to pay low wages in poor conditions.38 At the same time, however, they provide millions of rural workers with incomes considerably higher than they can earn from agriculture, and constitute an important source of revenue for many local governments, which in turn support their growth. Finally they make a key contribution to the development of many rural areas and to the achievement of a comfortable standard of living (xiaokang). The rise of the TVE sector has had major implications for the SOEs and their workers, by greatly increasing competition and leading to a long-term decline in prots.39 At least potentially, this pressurizes the SOEs to cut costs and reduce the large welfare component of worker incomes, threatening the privileged position of Chinas industrial workers. Indeed, since 1978, but in particular since the late 1990s, the Chinese state has progressively weakened its previous ties to the urban workers, and retracted its commitment to defend their privileges. Up to the late 1990s, SOEs were partly protected from these forces by the soft budget constraint,40 and indeed that period saw substantial increases in real wages and other worker benets.41 However, Zhu Rongjis programme for SOE reform then began to lead to massive lay-offs of industrial workers as enterprises either cut their costs or went bankrupt. This

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35. Braithwaite, To Punish or Persuade, p. 87. 36. See Andrew G. Walder, The remaking of the Chinese working-class, 19491981, Modern China, Vol. 10, No. 1 (January 1984), pp. 348. 37. For the positive relationship between mechanization and safety see Nichols, Industrial Injury, pp. 11415, 181. For another industry in China, see Chen and Chan, Chinas market economics, p. 798. 38. Anita Chan (ed.), Chinas Workers Under Assault: The Exploitation of Labor in a Globalizing Economy (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), esp. pp. 82136. 39. Barry Naughton, Implications of the state monopoly over industry and its relaxation, Modern China, Vol. 18, No. 1 (January 1992), pp. 1441. 40. See for example Edward S. Steinfeld, Forging Reform in China: The Fate of State-owned Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 41. Nicholas R. Lardy, Chinas Unnished Economic Revolution (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), pp. 4950.

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The China Quarterly situation sharpened the contradiction between urban industrial enterprises and workers on the one hand, and TVEs and their workforce on the other. The history of the coal industry reects this general political economy, with rapid growth of TVE production in relatively small and unmechanized mines since 1978.42 Low-cost competition kept coal prices down and prevented SOEs from beneting from the winding down of price controls in the early 1990s. In the late 1990s, the industry experienced static demand and falling prices and the SOEs posted large losses. The governments response was to attempt to cut TVE production, using safety as the main pretext, in order to raise prices and improve the protability of the SOEs. It was only, however, from early 2000 that prices, and the situation of the SOEs, began to improve. The SOE sector. The economic situation of SOE mines, as of SOEs in general, has been one of increasing price competition from TVEs, hardening budget constraints, especially from the late 1990s, and growing conicts of interest between workers and managers.43 In this situation, the forces leading to the improvement of safety (particularly the government, the press and the unions) have been weaker than those working in the opposite direction. Even the central governments commitment to safety was perceived by some observers to have been weakened by the 1998 transfer of responsibility for worker safety from the Ministry of Labour to the State Administration of Work Safety Supervision under the State Economic and Trade Commission, because of a possible conict between responsibility for production and for safety.44 Chinas burgeoning press has played a role in bringing the issue to public notice, and thus pressurizing the government to take action. Reporters descend on the sites of major accidents in both SOE and TVE mines and often investigate the background; many of the sources for this article originate in such reports. However, mine managers often try to hamper the investigations. For example, after a serious accident at Muchonggou in Guizhou in February 2003, the authorities threatened workers if they talked to reporters, and denied reporters access to mine ofcers, forcibly expelling them from the hospital when they tried to talk to injured miners.45 While restricting the range of reporting, this also probably indicates that mine authorities fear the power of the press. The trade unions, despite their formal responsibilities, have not played
42. The major study of Chinas coal industry since 1949 is Thomson, The Chinese Coal Industry. For TVESOE relations see Tim Wright, Competition and complementarity: township and village mines and the state sector in Chinas coal industry, China Information, Vol. 14, No. 1 (2000), pp. 113130. 43. Kate Hannan, Industrial Change in China: Economic Restructuring and Conicting Interests (London: Routledge, 1998), ch. 2. 44. Zhongguo meikuang de sandao anquan guanli nanti (Three difcult problems for safety management in Chinas coal mines), 21 shiji jingji baodao (21st Century Economic Report), 9 July 2002, http://www.china5e.com/news/meitan/200207/200207090030.html (9 July 2002). 45. Tian Yue, Guizhou yi meikuang baozha 38 ren siwang, jizhe caifang kunnan chongchong (Thirty-eight killed in a Guizhou coal mine explosion many obstacles placed in the way of visiting reporters), Shenghuo xinbao (Life News), 27 February 2003, http://www.china5e.com/news/meitan/200302/200302270003.html (9 April 2003).

The Political Economy of Coal Mine Disasters a strong role in protecting workers interests. In general, the ofcial unions are closely integrated into the corporatist state, while unofcial unions are ruthlessly suppressed.46 One miner described the unions as bullshit, and went on:
They [the trade union] talked like well, isnt it all right that you got some money back? How much do you want? The victims families said our family members were killed and you thought I wanted just money? They couldnt live again, no matter how much you pay us. But sometimes the people in the trade union simply shut them out of the ofce and ignore them outside.47

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Even in the UK, Nichols nds only a weak relationship between levels of unionization and worker safety,48 and the same is the case in China.49 Set against these relatively weak forces working for improved safety has been the need for SOE managers to reduce costs in order to adapt to the increasingly competitive environment and hardening budget constraints. SOE cost cutting has affected safety in a variety of ways. Directly it has involved skimping on a range of safety provisions.50 An article in Zhongguo meitan (China Coal) reported that expenditures on safety during the Ninth Five-year Plan (19962000) were running at only half the planned level, with the result that many obsolete pieces of equipment were not being replaced, leading to a decline in safety conditions, especially in the area of ventilation.51 Many of these problems were evident at the Jixi mine, site of a major disaster in June 2002. Seen by the Chinese government as among the largest natural loss-making mines,52 Jixi was running up to ve years and 400 million yuan behind with wages, and 500 million yuan behind with safety expenditures. Lack of productive investment had left its equipment equivalent to 1960s or 1970s levels. Because most of the experienced workers had left, much of the workforce had been recently recruited from the villages. But reducing the intensity of work in order to improve safety was not an option: even to pay basic wages, the management had to push to maximize production.53
46. Anita Chan, Revolution or corporatism? Workers and trade unions in post-Mao China, The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, No. 29 (January 1993), pp. 3162. 47. What can we claim after the blast? A miners son in Sichuan talks about injustice at coalmines, China Labour Bulletin (hereafter CLB), 27 July 2002, http://www.chinalabour.org.hk/iso/article_pv.adp?article_id 3129 (2 September 2002). 48. Nichols, Industrial Injury, pp. 149155. 49. Daniel Z. Ding, Keith Goodall and Malcolm Warner, The impact of economic reform on the role of trade unions in Chinese enterprises, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 13, No. 3 (May 2002), pp. 431449. 50. For an explicit reference to the link between TVE competition and low safety investment by SOE mines, see ZMB 31 July 2001, http://202.84.17.112/mtb/20010731/GB/ mtb^2935^3^mtb073135.htm (1 August 2001). 51. Insufcient investment a major cause of accidents, translated in CLB, 8 June 2001, http://iso.china-labour.org.hk/iso/article.adp?article_id 1077 (4 September 2001). See also ZMB, 17 May 2001, http://202.84.17.112/mtb/20010517/GB/mtb^2892^2^mtb05172 6.htm (17 May 2001). 52. Peter Nolan, China and the Global Business Revolution (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001), p. 730. 53. Guoyou meikuang: anquan zhi wai de kunjing (State-owned coal mines: difculties apart from safety), Nanfang zhoumo (Southern Weekend), 7 August 2002, http://www.china5e.com/news/meitan/200208/200208070070.html (8 August 2002).

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The China Quarterly Cost cutting also lies behind the increasing practice of contracting out the operation of the mines, which elsewhere has tended to detract from work safety by allowing each party to shift responsibility on to others.54 For example, an old worker at Jixi attributed the inattention to safety precautions to the contracting out of coal faces to gang bosses.55 Neither the contractors nor the mine authorities were willing to pay for the necessary safety equipment and precautions.56 Less directly, cost cutting was involved in the opening of small pits often by labour service or diversied economy companies in order to expand production cheaply without major new investment but also often to provide employment for workers laid off as the parent enterprise shed staff. These pits caused serious safety problems and were the sites of several major disasters, such as that at Hegang, Heilongjiang, where 54 were killed in May 2001.57 In response, the government decided from the end of June to close all such pits.58 In 2001, 739 pits, mostly in Shanxi, Heilongjiang or Jilin, were closed.59 Within this situation, both downswings and upswings in the economic cycle were problematic. The downswing of the late 1990s increased the pressure on SOEs to cut costs, and reduced the resources available for investment in safety. Nor did the upswing from 2000 improve the situation. In the West, the incidence of industrial accidents has tended to be positively correlated with the business cycle, because of the pressure to increase production as business improves.60 Similarly in China, a leading ofcial pointed out that in better economic times both SOE and TVE mines strain to increase production and workers work extra shifts to win bonuses, so that safety takes a back seat. He concluded: the more coal prices rise and the better the economic situation is for coal enterprises, the greater the effort the government must put into safety.61

54. Nichols, Industrial Injury, p. 95; Dorman, Markets and Mortality, p. 19; Miners pay the price of privatization, CLB, 4 April 2001, http://www.china-labour.org.hk/iso/article_pv.adp?article_id 1168 (3 April 2002) . 55. Three difcult problems for safety management; Subcontracted mines leave no room for safety from a Jixi miner (2), broadcast by CLB, 6 July 2002, http://www.chinalabour.org.hk/iso/article_pv.adp?article_id 2718 (2 September 2002). 56. Why the Jixi mine blast? An interview with a Jixi coal miner (2), CLB, 22 June 2002, http://iso.china-labour.org.hk/iso/article.adp?article_id 2678 (19 July 2002). 57. Chinesenewsnet, 9 April 2002, http://www2.chinesenewsnet.com/cgi-bin/newsfetch.cgi?unidoc big5&src SinoNews/Mainland/cna-176284.html (10 April 2002) 58. Anquan shigu pinchu, woguo jiang guanbi quanbu meikuang kuangban xiaojing (Because of frequent accidents, China will close all small pits operated by large mines), China Coal Information Network (hereafter CCIN), 23 May 2001, http://www.chinacoal. gov.cn/coal/jryw/0523x1.htm (23 May 2001) 59. 2001 nian guanbi guoyou zhongdian meikuang ziban xiaojing mingdan (List of small pits operated by state mines closed in 2001), CCIN, http://www.chinacoal.gov.cn/coal/ hygl/jjyx/jjyx010806.htm (19 April 2002) 60. Nichols, Industrial Injury, pp. 128129, 137; Dorman, Markets and Mortality, p. 15. 61. Xu Yi daibiao tichu, meijia shangzhang shi geng yao zhongshi anquan shengchan (Xu Yi points up the even greater need to stress safety in a period of rising coal prices), CCIN, 13 March 2002, http://www.chinacoal.gov.cn/coal/jryw/020313x1.htm (15 March 2002)

The Political Economy of Coal Mine Disasters The TVE sector. The balance between forces working for and against safety is even more complex in TVE mines, where the most serious safety problems reside. Cost cutting has been central to the success of these mines, as it was for Britains traditional capitalists (as identied by Dwyer), who employed a labour intensive mode of production where safety expenditures were pared to the minimum.62 Similarly, Chinas TVE mines skimp on safety standards and training: crucially, ventilation provisions, whether in the form of mechanical ventilation or of extra shafts to allow for circulation of air, have been far inferior to those provided in the state sector.63 One ofcial graphically described the perils of working underground in the small mines, where lighting was by the occasional incandescent lamp, fans for ventilation were only switched on briey every 20 minutes or half-an-hour, and coal faces as high as churches had no timber support.64 In addition, the TVE mines use relatively untrained workers who have recently transferred from agriculture. While there are many problems in blaming the victims for accidents, in general newly employed workers tend to have higher injury rates than more experienced ones.65 The low level of safety consciousness among the miners (which, however, is structural rather than contingent) in TVEs does make some contribution to their high accident rate. In 1997 the central government launched a major campaign to improve safety in the TVE mines. Supporters of the campaign included the SOE mines, which used it as a weapon of competition to suppress their rivals. Similarly, Dwyer interprets the history of safety legislation in British coal mining as an attempt by industrial capitalists to reduce low-cost competition from traditional capitalists.66 Such an interpretation ts quite easily with the Chinese case, with the difference being the reemergence of the traditional capitalists in the TVE sector. Thus the campaigns agenda was not simply to improve safety in TVE mines but to close pits and reduce output in order to raise prices and improve the SOEs nancial position.67 However, the campaign faced strong opposition from a broad coalition of local interests, which illustrates the difculties of enhancing safety in the sector. As over many other issues, such as scal restraint or environmental protection, this coalition made it difcult for the central state to impose its will.68 In the case of coal, the campaign challenged not only
62. Tom Dwyer, Life and Death at Work: Industrial Accidents as a Case of Socially Produced Error (New York: Plenum Press, 1991), ch. 1. 63. The coal miners dark fate, Los Angeles Times, 23 January 2002, http:// www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-012302coal.story (24 January 2002). 64. ZMB 27 March 2001, http://www.cinic.com.cn/ZMB/20010327/GB/ ZMB^2867^1^ZMB032719.htm (28 March 2001). 65. Nichols, Industrial Injury, p. 128. 66. Dwyer, Life and Death at Work, ch. 1. 67. See for example the State Economic and Trade Commission order No. 457 (2001), CCIN, http://www.chinacoal.gov.cn/coal/hygl/jjyx/jjyx_16.htm (19 April 2002); Thomson, The Chinese Coal Industry, pp. 167169; Wright, Competition and complementarity, pp. 12627. 68. Jean C. Oi, Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 189190.

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The China Quarterly the low-cost mode of production but even the very existence of the TVE mines themselves, so that not only owners and operators, but also many local governments and even workers joined the opposition. As with other TVE enterprises, the mines were closely linked to local governments in a nexus described by Jean Oi as local state corporatism.69 Fiscal reforms during the 1980s made many local governments dependent on revenue from TVEs to balance their books. The Jiawang township in Xuzhou, where 92 miners were killed in an explosion in 2001, received 30 per cent of its revenue from small coal pits.70 In other cases, the dependence was less direct, in that local coal was needed for other industries crucial to local development. For example, the tobacco drying industry in Maotian, Hubei, found it far cheaper to buy coal from illegal local mines than from legal mines further aeld.71 Such considerations are often (not entirely accurately) categorized in the Chinese press as local protectionism.72 As a result, county or township level cadres often tolerate the illegal reopening of mines, or even give licences to mines that do not meet the criteria. The actual operators of the mines, private or collective, also had a strong interest in their continued and successful operation. While the great majority (over 85 per cent and increasing in the late 1990s) of the mines were formally under collective ownership, in practice the distinction between private and collective was often blurred. On the one hand, even when a mine was formally dened as collective, it was often contracted out to an individual operator.73 On the other, private owners were still mostly former ofcials and their relations,74 and they remained deeply imbedded in the structure of local state corporatism. Many local and provincial ofcials held shares even in illegal mines.75 In the Mengnanzhuang mine in Shanxi, site of a major disaster in March 2003, the largest investor was the head of the city coal bureau; although he had earlier been ordered to close the mine, he tried to dump responsibility on the mine manager.76 Where they could be identied, private
69. Classically in Jean C. Oi, Fiscal reform and the economic foundations of local state corporatism in China, World Politics, Vol. 45, No. 1 (October 1992), pp. 99126. 70. See Yao ming haishi yao fanwan guanyu Xuzhou meikuang baozha de sikao (Your rice bowl or your life thoughts on the explosion at the Xuzhou coal mine), Sinacom, 28 July 2001, http://news.sina.com.cn/c/20010728/314398.html (26 April 2002). 71. Zhongguo xinwenwang, 19 March 2002, http://news.sina.com.cn/c/20020319/ 1457514671.html (3 April 2002). 72. As suggested by Professor Li Qiang of Qinghua University, see Your rice bowl or your life. 73. See for example Luo Wenjing Gongtou wei duochan liang dun mei zangsong 40 yutiaoming (Foreman buries more than 40 miners in order to produce two more tons of coal), http://news.fm365.com/xinwen/shehui/20000426/50400.htm (9 April 2003). 74. Jonathan Unger, The Transformation of Rural China (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002), pp. 14345. 75. Chinese mines exploit workers desperation, Washington Post, 9 September 2001, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A605302001Sep8.html (4 April 2002). 76. Women bu yao dai xue de mei! Shanxi 3.22 teda wasi baozha shigu diaocha (We dont want bloody coal an investigation of the 22 March major gas explosion in Shanxi), Xinhua wang, 27 March 2003, http://www.china5e.com/news/meitan/200303/ 200303270039.html (9 April 2003).

The Political Economy of Coal Mine Disasters owners made an easy target and were often characterized as interested in money but not in lives.77 At Mengnanzhuang, it was reported that, an hour before the explosion, workers had smelt gas and tried to leave, but were ordered back into the mine by the boss.78 Workers in the TVE mines had an ambiguous attitude towards safety issues. In the aftermath of the 2001 Xuzhou disaster, the China Central Television Economy Half-Hour programme put the dilemma of workers considering working down TVE mines in the words your rice bowl or your life. To some extent the workers were attracted by the pay, and, when reporters asked villagers why they worked in such a dangerous environment, they replied that the wages were high.79 However, the idea that safety campaigns embody upper income groups impos[ing] their job risk preferences on the poor, as Viscusi suggests,80 involves many unrealistic assumptions about full employment and compensating wages.81 In general, the situation of Chinas TVE workers, under immense pressure from a massive reserve army of labour, is much closer to the situation described by Dorman: The fundamental problem is that workers are rendered vulnerable by the fear of losing their jobs, and, in the absence of regulation, this prevents them from demanding and achieving safe working conditions.82 Rather than being compensated precisely for increased risk by higher wages, differences in the level of risk faced by workers correspond to the other differences in their life chances and thus compound them.83 Similarly, Nichols argues that those who have little scope to exercise preferences should be afforded the protection that can only be bestowed through collective means.84 For China, Martin King Whyte perceptively sums up the situation:
Two key factors, however, undermine the power of TVE workers to demand improvements in their working conditions: the heavy stress local authorities place on attracting new investment and making local TVEs protable and the fact that a reserve army of the unemployed exists other villagers. Most rural cultivators would prefer Dickensian industrial working conditions to a life of agricultural toil.85

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Although Dorman argues that even non-unionized workers often mobi-

77. After the Xuzhou disaster of July 2001, one villager blamed it on the too cruel heart of the mine owner; see Renmin ribao (Peoples Daily), 26 July 2001, http://www. peopledaily.com.cn/GB/shehui/47/20010726/521047.html (3 April 2002). 78. Miners eeing escaping gas forced down into mine shaft shortly before massive explosion kills 72 of them, CLB, 31 March 2003, http://www.china-labour.org.hk/iso/article.adp?article_id 4099 (11 April 2003). 79. See Your rice bowl or your life. 80. W. K. Viscusi, Risk by Choice: Regulating Health and Safety in the Workplace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 80. 81. Dorman, Markets and Mortality, passim. 82. Ibid. p. 156. 83. Ibid. p. 21. 84. Nichols, Industrial Injury, p. 71; a widow of a miner killed in Shanxi expressed it in these terms: Who told us to be poor? He had no choice, see The coal miners dark fate. 85. Martin King Whyte, The changing role of workers, in Merle Goldman and Roderick MacFarquhar (eds.), The Paradox of Chinas Post-Mao Reforms (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 181.

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The China Quarterly lize around safety issues,86 there is little evidence of pressure from TVE mine workers to improve safety. That workers are not happy about the situation is shown by the reaction after accidents such as when victims families beat up the owner of an illegal small mine in Jilin where 30 workers were killed in 200287 but even after accidents workers realize they have few if any alternatives. A woman whose husband had been killed in the Xuzhou disaster said: The mines wont stay closed, and when they open again, I will work in them too. Its not safe, but what else can I do? I dont think of it as good or bad. Theres just no other way; while another pointed out: If we complain, they can always nd someone else to work.88 Moreover, the miners realized that the real agenda of the safety campaign has not been to improve their conditions but to close their mines for the benet of others. As a leading Chinese economist perceptively observed: Objectively speaking, this [campaign] transfers a (n albeit illegal) benet from the peasants to the workers.89 Thus, the TVE miners would have welcomed better conditions but not the loss of the income stream. TimeAsia reported: In desolate places like Guizhou, there is no other way to make money, and quotes a worker there as saying: How can the government close the mines? We need the coal. Everybody does.90 In the same province, the head of the Lupanshui Mining Bureau discussed the difculty of closing down small mines: The government has its general policies, but for us on the ground we have to deal with the real problems of livelihood, local economy and job creation.91 Indeed it was often possible to mobilize miners and local peasants to oppose government attempts to close down mines for safety reasons: even as late as 2002, when the campaign had been in operation ve years, one report from Shanxi listed a whole series of sit-ins and disturbances organized by local mine owners to resist closures.92 In order to weaken the nexus of interests supporting unsafe mines, some of the

86. Dorman, Markets and Mortality, p. 123. 87. 27 coal miners killed and families held in isolation in Jilin province, CLB, 10 December 2002, http://www.china-labour.org.hk/iso/article.adp?article_id 3528 (12 December 2002). 88. Washington Post, 9 September 2001, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A605302001Sep8.html (4 April 2002); for similar statements by workers disadvantaged in other ways, see Marc J. Blecher, Hegemony and workers politics in China, The China Quarterly, No. 170 (June 2002), pp. 283303. 89. Shi Xunpeng, Dui ganjing yachan gongzuo de pouxi fansi he jianyi (Analysis, rethinking and proposals for the work of losing pits and reducing output ), Meitan jingji yanjiu, June 1999. 90. What dies beneath, TimeAsia, Vol. 158, No 9 (3 September 2001), http:// www.time.com/time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,172581,00.html (19 October 2001). 91. Problems in Chinas coal policy from Liushuipan [sic Lupanshui] Coal Bureau chief in Guizhou province, CLB, 3 August 2002, http://iso.china-labour.org.hk/iso/article.adp?article_id 2903 (2 September 2002). 92. Zheli de xiao kuang za gan wufa wutian lai zi Shanxi Jialequan, Luyukou kuangqu de diaocha (How can small mines act in contravention of the law and morality? A report from Jialequan and Luyukou mine areas in Shanxi), Zhongguo anquan shengchan bao (China Safety News), 27 March 2003, in CLB, http://big5.china-labour.org.hk/big5/article_pv.adp?article_id 4155 (9 April 2003).

The Political Economy of Coal Mine Disasters more far-sighted local authorities have attempted to detach the local population (less so the migrant workers) from the opposition to mine closure by providing incentives for other forms of income generation. As one report argued: It is only if one can provide the peasants with new routes to prosperity that the closure of small mines can be successful.93 Because of this broad coalition opposing the campaign, the central government has had considerable difculty closing even unsafe mines. A Xinhua report admitted that campaigns to reform the small mines have taken place every two years for 20 years, but the mines always seem to come back.94 Difculties tended to be greater when economic conditions became more favourable. After coal prices began to recover from around April 2000, small mines, spurred on by prot, began to reopen, often illegally.95 Indeed, a report from Hunan in mid-2001 suggested that the recovery of the market, together with a lax attitude on the part of local authorities, had led to the illegal reopening of many small mines, so that virtually all the campaigns achievements had been dissipated.96 Bribery, corruption and the networks of patronage that permeate the TVE sector lie behind much of the problem.97 In Wuan county, Hebei province, a Zhongguo meitan bao (China Coal News) report suggested that, for payments of 5,000 (for mines with licences) or 10,000 yuan (for those without), the township government allowed mines to operate clandestinely, during the daytime mining the coal underground and leaving it at the bottom of the shaft, during the night bringing it up and shifting it by truck to the coal yards.98 Such payments often came to light only after an accident, as did the several thousand yuan paid to ofcials of the Hancheng mining company by the contractor illegally operating the unsafe mine in which 48 workers were killed in 2001.99 Even when imposed, closure orders were often not obeyed. According to a report on a serious accident at a small mine in Panxian, Guizhou, in December 2000, the mine had been closed down earlier that year. But,

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93. ZMB, 11 June 2002, http://202.84.17.111/baoshe/mtb/20020611/GB/ mtb^3079^1^mtb0611114.btk (14 June 2002). 94. Xiao meikuang: qi yige guan zi liaojie (Can small coal mines be brought to an end with the one word close ), Xinhua, 14 August 2001, http://www.xinhuanet.com/focus/xiangguan/shx10.htm (7 June 2002). 95. Gongren ribao, 31 August 2001, http://news.sina.com.cn/c/20010831/ 344440.html (30 October 2001); Quanguo guanbi zhengdun xiao meikuang gongzuo fazhan bu pingheng (Uneven development of the closure and reform of small mines), CCIN, 20 November 2001, http://www.chinacoal.gov.cn/coal/jryw/0111020x1.htm (20 November 2001). 96. Hunan feifa xiaokuang sihui furan changjue guanjing yachan chengguo jihu dangran wucun (Reopening of illegal small mines in Hunan undermines achievements of campaign to close mines), CCIN, 8 June 2001, http://www.chinacoal.gov.cn/coal/jryw/0608x1.htm (8 June 2001). 97. Unger, Transformation of Rural China, pp. 202203; Chinesenewsnet 27 March 2002, http://www2.chinesenewsnet.com/cgi-bin/newsfetch.cgi?unidoc big5&src SinoNews/Mainland/Tue_Mar_26_19_30_40_2002.html (28 March 2002). 98. ZMB 6 August 2002, http://www.cinic.org.cn/img/disp.asp?id 4&baoshe zhongguomeitanbao &banci 1 (9 August 2002). 99. Chinesenewsnet 23 January 2002, http://www3.chinesenewsnet.com/cgi-bin/newsfetch.cgi?unidoc big5&src SinoNews/Mainland/cna-156621.html (23 March 2002).

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The China Quarterly with the permission of the township government (though not of the county), it had reopened in order to provide coal for local use. The county authorities issued an order prohibiting mining, but took no further immediate action. In September and November they inspected the mine, nding serious violations of safety requirements, and again ordered it to be closed. Despite repeated orders, the mine continued to operate until the disaster occurred.100 The inability of the state to close unsafe mines certainly had an impact on fatality rates, and illegal mines accounted for 22 per cent of recorded deaths in 1998 and no doubt for a higher proportion of actual deaths.101 In Guizhou, 32 per cent of the accidents and 42 per cent of the fatalities in TVE mines in the rst ten months of 2001 occurred in illegal mines.102 Conclusion This article has argued that, after a long-term improvement in its coal mine safety performance, Chinas progress stalled, essentially as the result of the cost pressures introduced by the competition generated by the TVE sector. Current government policy focuses on reducing the level of cost competition by closing down many TVE mines, thereby reducing the size of the sector with the worst safety record, while at the same time improving the situation of the SOEs and enabling them to increase investment in safety. An analysis of the roles of different types of production in the overall political economy, however, throws doubt on the likely success of this strategy. The fundamental trend over the last two decades has been the progressive opening of the Chinese economy to competition, and it is not clear that the central state has sufcient reach to reverse that trend in areas where coal mining is an important source of income generation. Rather, even for the state sector, cost pressures will be intensied by globalization and Chinas entry into the WTO, probably less through direct competition in the coal market than through pressure to reduce energy costs in the production of export goods. Moreover, meeting increased demand for coal may well stretch the capacity of the SOEs, thus leading to further pressures to revive the small mine sector. The long-term solution will lie in the broader development of the Chinese economy to a stage where it can offer the hundreds of millions of rural labourers a decent living without their needing to resort to risking their lives in backward and dangerous small mines.

100. Guojia meikuang anquan jiancha ju, Zai kaicai minyong mei de huangzi xia Guizhou Wangjiazhuang kuang 12.26 zhongda wasi baozha shigu de diaocha (Under the pretext of providing coal for the people an investigation of the 26 December explosion at the Wangjiazhuang mine in Guizhou), http://www.chinacoal-safety.govn.cn/aqdt/ aqdt97.htm (19 April 2001). 101. ZMGN, 1999, p. 73. 102. Dui meikuang feifa shengchan shicha de guanyuan jiang bei lianzu (Ofcials guilty for failing to investigate illegal coal mines), CCIN, 2 November 2001, http:// www.chinacoal.com.cn/coal/jryw/011102x2.htm (6 November 2001).