Official Chinese state media has reported that 16 people died and five people were injured after a fire consumed a shoe-making factory in Wenling, in the eastern Zhejiang province of China, this Tuesday.
According to the state press agency Xinhua, the blaze raged for three hours and burnt down about 800 square meters of the Dadong Shoe Company factory. It took nearly 100 firefighters to extinguish it, and some 20 people were rescued.
The cause of the fire remains unknown, and is currently being investigated.
On Wednesday, two of the factory’s owners and one manager were detained by police following the fire.
This tragedy illustrates once more the dangerous working conditions and poor safety standards that Chinese workers face.
The rapid economic growth experienced by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over the last twenty years has been marred by repeated industrial accidents, which have drawn criticism for the way in which Chinese authorities handle the security of their massive workforce.
Last June, the deadliest blaze in a decade cost the lives of some 120 people, after a short circuit triggered a fire in a poultry plant in the northeast province of Jilin.
An investigation subsequently revealed that the factory’s exits had been blocked, trapping workers inside.
There has also been growing concern over dangerous working conditions in the Chinese coal mining industry.
With an estimated 12,000 mines spread out throughout the country, China is the world’s largest miner of coal, as well as its biggest consumer. Incidents are frequent and have claimed the lives of 1,384 workers in 2012 alone.
Last December, for example, 21 miners were killed in a gas explosion at an illegally operated coal mine.
According to the Hong-Kong based NGO China Labour Bulletin, “lax enforcement of regulations and safety standards on the ground means that accidents and deaths are still widespread and commonplace.”
Labour rights routinely violated
Safety is not the only concern of Chinese workers.
The thousands of factories that manufacture everything from clothes and shoes to the latest electronic devices very often fail to respect workers’ rights.
Last year, China Labour Watch, a New York-based non-profit group, conducted an undercover investigation inside Pegatron, a manufacturer of the Apple iPhone.
It revealed “at least 86 labor rights violations, including 36 legal violations and 50 ethical violations.”
“Six days a week, the workers making these phones have to work almost 11-hour shifts, 20 minutes of which is unpaid, and the remainder of which is paid at a rate of US$1.50 an hour (US$268 per month) before overtime.
“[…] After a gruelling day’s work, what a worker has to look forward to is a 12-person dorm room, lining up for a quick cold shower in one of the two dozen showers shared by hundreds of workers. […] A pregnant woman interviewed was working equally long overtime hours, despite Chinese laws protecting the health of pregnant women by mandating an eight-hour workday.”
The same company came under the spotlight after the death of a 15-year-old employee last October, Shi Shamokin.
A long road ahead
Many hopes were generated last November when the Communist Party of China (CPC) announced a set of sweeping reforms, which included the relaxation of the one-child policy and the end of the Mao-era system of “re-education through labour” – or work camps.
The move was welcomed by human rights organisations, which nevertheless call on the government to go a step further by installing a proper system for fair trials and ending all forms of arbitrary detention.
However, despite new economic reforms that push the liberalisation process further, the grip of the CPC on Chinese workers and on those who would like to represent them does not seem to be loosening.
At a meeting last October between Xi Jinping and the only legal Chinese union, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the Chinese president found a poetic metaphor to reaffirm the leadership of the government over the labour unions.
“The job of China’s workers’ movement is to strive for the collective Chinese dream of national rejuvenation,” reportedly said the president.
Reacting to the outcome of this meeting, the China Labour Bulletin wrote: “It (the ACFTU) still sees itself as a third party, as a broker between labour and management, rather than as a representative of the workers.”
