China Has Been Running Global Influence Campaigns for Years

Pro-China protests ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics were orchestrated by Chinese officials. The world thought they were a spontaneous showing of Chinese nationalism.

By Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian and Zach Dorfman

A French athlete, surrounded by Chinese security officers, carries the Olympic torch in Paris in April 2008. (Philippe Wojazer / Reuters)

MAY 14, 2019

In the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, with the torch relay soon set to pass through San Francisco, an envoy from China met with the city’s then-mayor, Gavin Newsom.

Riots had broken out the month before in Lhasa, Tibet, leading to a crackdown by Chinese security forces. The torch’s journey through London and Paris had been marred by anti-China protests and arrests. Pro-Tibet and pro-Uighur activists, among others, were planning demonstrations in San Francisco, the torch’s only U.S. stop.

Beijing was deeply concerned about damage to China’s image as its Olympic debut approached, and hoped to clamp down on dissent beyond the country’s borders. The envoy who met with Newsom demanded that he prohibit the demonstrations and, in effect, suspend the First Amendment, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information. Newsom, now California’s governor, refused, according to the former official. (Newsom did not respond to a request for comment.)

So, in a series of covert and often coercive measures that have now become a hallmark of Beijing’s approach to image management, Chinese authorities took matters into their own hands. They orchestrated pro-Beijing demonstrations, deployed their own security, and made behind-the-scenes threats to activists, all while denying such measures—a strategy repeated across four continents along the torch relay.

Judged by its scope and scale, and the sheer number of active participants, China’s 2008 measures amounted to arguably the largest covert global influence campaign in history, and a preview of how China—now a behemoth seen in Washington more as a threat than a partner—would approach power and influence as its international status grew. Yet at the time, Western observers, who were preoccupied with domestic Chinese human-rights violations and what appeared to be a surge in organic Chinese nationalism in cities such as London and Paris, missed it almost entirely.

Beijing was almost certainly emboldened by the anemic international response to its squashing of protests over the torch run in 2008, and Western democracies are only beginning to grapple with the implications. In the decade since, China has undertaken an expansive policy of surveilling, cultivating, and pressuring its diaspora; stolen trade secrets and intellectual property from Western businesses to catalyze China’s development; and carried out a coordinated international campaign of intimidation, even kidnapping dissidents and Chinese ethnic minorities abroad, forcing many to return to China to face imprisonment or worse.

Its actions during the torch run offered a hint of Beijing’s capabilities and the long arm of its security apparatus. Whereas Vietnam detained or expelled anti-China protesters prior to the torch arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, leaders in democratic countries could not simply ensure positive media coverage for China or clamp down on criticism. China responded by directly interfering with the rights and freedoms guaranteed in free societies to polish its own image.

In San Francisco, this meant organizing crowds to drown out protesters. After Newsom declined to ban rallies during the torch relay, Chinese consular officers in California mobilized somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 Chinese students to attend the protests, according to the same former senior U.S. intelligence official, and confirmed by another former counterintelligence official who asked not to be named discussing Chinese efforts on U.S. soil. These students were asked to take part in counterdemonstrations, and given free transport, boxed lunches, and T-shirts. Those on Chinese government scholarships faced threats that their funding would be revoked if they did not participate.

According to the former senior U.S. intelligence official, Beijing also flew in intelligence officers to direct the pro-China demonstrators in real time. These officials, wearing earpieces connected to radios, directed groups of counter-protesters, who ripped down banners and occupied spaces so that anti-China demonstrators could not gather.

Pro-China protesters demonstrate outside the San Francisco Olympic Torch Ceremony in April 2008. (Erin Siegal / Reuters)

These operations weren’t unique to San Francisco. Chinese embassies and consulates elsewhere are known to have bused in thousands of students from surrounding areas to participate in counterdemonstrations in London, Canberra, Paris, Nagano, and elsewhere, often providing signs and flags, helping them drown out pro-Tibetan or other groups. The South Korean government launched an investigation after well-equipped crowds of Chinese students appeared in Seoul, where they pelted anti-China activists with rocks in videos that went viral on YouTube—violence that a Chinese foreign-ministry spokesperson refused to condemn. Zhang Rongan, the head of a Chinese student organization in Australia known for close ties to Beijing, initially claimed that the Chinese embassy had provided support to help bring students from all over Australia to  the relay. (Zhang later denied that the students had received any outside support.) In his book, Qiaowu: Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese, the researcher James Jiann Hua To writes that Chinese students were also warned not to participate in any anti-China activity.

Though U.S officials shared the identities of Chinese intelligence officers in San Francisco with their Australian counterparts, which helped the Australians deny visas to some of them, according to the former U.S. senior intelligence official, the wider American public and media were not aware of these efforts. Media outlets at the time reported on the pro-Tibet activists and their cause, but also took pro-China crowds at face value. Reuters reported in April 2008 that the relay “has been dogged by anti-China protests that in turn prompted rallies by overseas Chinese, who are proud that their country is hosting the Olympics and of Beijing’s efforts to modernise Tibet.” Time wrote that “unlike the period after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, when the patriotism of many Chinese abroad was dampened by a distrust of the Communist Party, the torch protests have inspired cries of unity.”

The torch relay soon became what analysts point to as the global debut not just of China as a rising power but of Chinese nationalism as a force to be reckoned with. “This inflamed form of Chinese nationalism could be the most enduring and dangerous outcome of the protests surrounding the Olympics,” the China scholars Elizabeth Economy and Adam Segal wrote for Foreign Affairs in June 2008.

French police arrest a pro-Tibet protester along the Olympic Torch Relay path in Paris in April 2008. (Patrick Kovarik / Reuters)

These analyses aren’t so much wrong as they are incomplete. Many Chinese are indeed genuinely nationalistic, particularly since the country implemented nationwide patriotic education in public schools in the early 1990s. Grassroots nationalist protests are a notable feature of Chinese responses to global events, from the accidental U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 to regular anti-Japan protests. And the Beijing Olympics were an entirely understandable point of pride for many Chinese citizens, as well as members of the diaspora.

The global Chinese activism surrounding the relay was not just an expression of spontaneous national ardor, though, but also of the growing assertiveness of the Chinese security state. The demonstrations were far larger, better organized, and more ideologically uniform than they would have been without official direction. That Western observers were left discussing how dearly the Chinese people loved their country, rather than the scope and coercive reach of their government’s power, indicates how successful this influence campaign was.

Another feature of the torch relay that clearly foreshadowed the years to come was China’s opaque deployment of its own security forces abroad. Tall, well-trained men in blue-and-white tracksuits appeared alongside torch-bearers in many of the cities along the route, without public explanation by Olympic organizers. When questioned, Chinese officials insisted that the men were volunteers, but media reports soon revealed that they had in fact been recruited by Beijing from the ranks of the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary organization in China responsible for domestic security, riot control, and counterterrorism.

Robert Broadhurst, a senior London police commander in charge of security for the torch relay, said in May 2008 that Chinese authorities had threatened on multiple occasions to leave London off the torch itinerary if British police did not accept Chinese direction on local security measures. Broadhurst said the London police refused to comply. But as Konnie Huq, a relay participant in London, told the BBC, “the men in blue …  seemed to be ordering about the police and the Olympic officials and everyone just seemed to be doing what they said.” Other firsthand accounts also stated that the Chinese seemed at times to be calling the shots.

There was little precedent in Olympic history for the global deployment of host-country police. The first truly global torch relay had occurred in the run-up to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Greece did not send its own police officers to accompany the torch—and on the one occasion in which Greek authorities appeared to have made that suggestion, for the Australian leg of the torch relay, they faced significant backlash from Canberra. Four years later, Beijing deployed paramilitary recruits to accompany the torch around the world.

“The Chinese government has a policy of noninterference into other countries’ affairs,” Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the London-based School of Oriental and African Studies, told us. “Does telling the host country where the torch is passing how to police not amount to interference with someone’s domestic affairs?”

Yet the response from Western societies was primarily one of apathy. Media organizations paid little attention. The same was true of police forces in multiple countries, who complied with demands from Chinese authorities, with the notable exceptions of Australia and Japan. Beijing carried out its campaign on a global scale, Tsang said, “because they could. There wasn’t that much pushback from practically anyone.”

The dynamics that were on display ahead of the 2008 Olympics have only intensified. Chinese authorities have grown bolder and more effective at shutting down dissent not just at home, but abroad, in liberal democracies, by using threats, harassment, and surveillance while encouraging Chinese communities overseas to protest speech perceived as anti-China.

Since 2008, the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., has on at least two occasions mobilized Chinese international students along the East Coast to participate in pro-Beijing demonstrations when Chinese leaders have visited, both to create an aura of prestige and to physically occupy sidewalk space to squeeze out protesters. China’s security state has expanded as well, establishing overseas policing centers, such as in South Africa, and even resorting to extrajudicial renditions in the most extreme cases. And Chinese espionage has extensively targeted U.S. companies from Silicon Valley to the midwestern heartland.

At the time, the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch relay wasn’t seen as a sign of things to come. But in hindsight, it was a landmark—and a warning.

THE CHINESE INFLUENCE EFFORT HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

Beijing uses student and professional associations to try to influence not just Chinese citizens abroad, but outsiders, too.

By Didi Kirsten Tatlow

 In centuries past, Prussian, Napoleonic, Nazi, and Allied soldiers all tramped the Strasse des 17. Juni, an east–west boulevard traversing Berlin’s leafy Tiergarten park, over which soars a winged, golden statue of the Roman goddess Victoria.

More recently, in the auditorium of the Technische Universität Berlin, which lies along the thoroughfare, a thousand patriotic voices swelled in song for a different rising power: China.

“Though I live in a foreign country, I cannot change my Chinese heart,” the mostly doctoral-level science students chorused to images of the Great Wall rolling onstage in a karaoke version of “My Chinese Heart,” a Chinese Communist Party–approved classic. “My ancestors long ago branded ‘China’ on everything in me!” they sang.

The Lunar New Year gala, in late January, was a glitzy, occasionally ear-splitting affair organized by half a dozen Chinese student associations at top universities in Berlin and Brandenburg state, which encircles it. On the program: Dance, music, kung fu, jokes about the German weather (too gray and wet), prizes (Huawei electronics and bottles of baijiu, a strong Chinese liquor)—and a message from Shi Mingde, the outgoing Chinese ambassador to Germany.

Shi Mingde (Axel Schmidt / Reuters)

“I hope you will not disappoint the ardent expectations of Secretary-General Xi Jinping and our motherland,” Shi said. “Turn patriotic feelings into patriotic deeds … tightly tie your own ideals to the destiny of the motherland!” And in an account of the evening published by the Chinese embassy in Berlin, he continued: “Bring science and technology back home, to push forward China’s economic and social development!”

On the face of it, the event was unremarkable, a party to usher in the Year of the Pig. Yet it had deeper meaning: In addition to organizing parties and cultural events, the 80 Chinese student associations in Germany, which represent 60,000 students from the People’s Republic of China, are pieces of a Europe-wide puzzle of organizations. Perhaps numbering in the thousands, and meticulously fit together by Beijing, these associations support the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology and goals—and its narrative about China—among both Chinese and Europeans, and try to ensure that its overseas citizens, and others of ethnic Chinese descent, are loyal.

Like mushroom tendrils spreading unseen for miles beneath the forest floor, this network remains largely invisible to Europeans and their leaders, who broadly lack the necessary Chinese-language skills and familiarity with Communist Party politics. It seeks not simply to shape the conversation about China in Europe, but also to bring back technology and expertise. While the effort is driven by the party, crucial to its implementation is an opaque and little-known Beijing-based agency known as the United Front Work Department.

These moves by China come amid growing concern in democratic nations around the world over Beijing’s political and economic espionage, whether that be alleged theft of intellectual property—a central issue in the American trade dispute with China—or the monitoring and pressuring of Chinese abroad. Politicians and officials in the U.S. and Australia in particular have expressed alarm over Beijing’s ability and willingness to project power in their territory, though reactions in Europe have so far been less forthright.

“China is trying to access German politics, economics, and security, and a lot of people don’t realize it,” Carlo Masala, an international-politics professor and a security expert at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, told me. “It’s not that we’re blind with regard to China, but we’re not looking very closely.”

Germany has welcomed generations of Chinese students, both before and after China’s 1949 Communist revolution. In a historical irony, the United Front partly began nearly 100 years ago as the Einheitsfront in Berlin, when the city was a center of activity for Vladimir Lenin’s Communist International, which sought to neutralize communism’s enemies by infiltrating, then co-opting and coercing, critics and the undecided.

A baseline count of groups in Germany linked to China’s United Front yields 230; the real number is almost certainly higher. These include German Chinese friendship, culture, and economic societies; Chinese chambers of commerce; professional groups for Chinese science and technology experts working in Germany; and a “public diplomacy” association that openly boasts of its influence with German and European politicians. And that’s before you add the student associations and 20 Confucius Institutes, both of which are consistent with United Front goals. (Multiple emails and phone calls seeking comment from the Chinese embassy in Berlin, and Chinese student and professional associations in Germany, went unanswered.)

After the 1989 Tiananmen Square student-led protests, China’s Communist Party began to rely on student associations in particular to monitor and shape students’ activity abroad and spread its message, according to Alex Joske, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra. To students schooled in China’s patriotic education, Shi’s message for the Lunar New Year party in Berlin was clear: Be loyal (“patriotic feelings”); transfer technology (“patriotic deeds”); don’t assimilate (“tie your own ideals to the destiny of the motherland”).

The party’s level of control takes myriad forms, and is deliberately interlaced with helpful services. At the Freie Universität Berlin, a brochure for the Chinese student association offers 100 pages of practical information on how to navigate German bureaucracy, where to eat well, or ways to find a roommate. On page 101, though, a political message leaps out: “When we are together you can take to the streets and shout for the motherland. You can welcome Xi Dada and Peng Mama”—China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and his wife, Peng Liyuan. The university did not respond to requests for comment.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang meet with students at the Chancellery in Berlin in May 2013. (Thomas Peter / Reuters)

The head of a student association at a university in Germany, who like others I interviewed requested anonymity to avoid retribution, said Chinese diplomats suggested she take up the position, and typically offered “several hundred euros” to pay for events. Importantly, while many students see these gatherings as primarily social, the political is woven in. One of several visits in recent years by China’s premier, Li Keqiang, to Berlin was an opportunity for a party co-organized by the embassy in Li’s honor in Tiergarten park, said another student who is a member of a Berlin student association.

One former head of a university student association described how, before departing for Germany, a senior province-level Communist Party official in China explicitly asked him to spy for Beijing while completing his studies. The official referenced national development and patriotism, and suggested there would be financial compensation. Though the student declined, he did agree to lead his German university’s Chinese student association. After two years of doing so, he received a certificate of leadership stamped by the Chinese embassy, which he showed me. The document would have helped his career when he returned to China, though he never did.

And as part of efforts to build China into a global science and technology leader—a push that has already raised concerns Beijing is attempting to build its technological bona fides by acquiring Western companies and through economic espionage—it also seeks to mine researchers for information. While it is almost impossible to put a figure on the cost to Germany of these various efforts, Bitkom, a digital-economy association in Berlin, estimated in 2017 that the German economy lost about 55 billion euros ($61 billion) annually in cyberespionage and data theft alone. The organization said about a fifth of the attacks came from China.

In January, the Federation of German Industries declared China not just a partner but “a systemic competitor”; months later, the European Commission said China was “an economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership, and a systemic rival.” In a 2018 report, Germany’s domestic-intelligence agency wrote that China’s security agencies “intensively elicit the work area and knowledge potential of Chinese scientists in Germany.” The report suggested it was difficult for Berlin to prosecute such espionage when the border between state and individual activity was blurred, as was often the case with China. “Despite diverse indications of Chinese involvement” in a high-profile case last year, the agency wrote, those involved “could only be charged under … unfair competition laws.”

A carefully built network of study and work helps the process along. Student associations advertise well-paid jobs back home in state institutes or companies, including perks such as housing or help with children’s schooling. Some offers include annual trips back to Germany so graduates can maintain personal and professional contacts.

One program advertised on the WeChat account of the Berlin and Brandenburg Public Students Federation circulates offers from Chinese universities seeking to attract “outstanding scholars,” with all-expenses-paid trips back to China to promote academic collaboration and help them find jobs. Another, from the Wuhan University of Technology, seeks Chinese students with expertise in disciplines including new materials, oceanic engineering, traffic-management systems, artificial intelligence, and security studies. In one case, a researcher of underwater robotics at a university in northwest Germany returned to China to deliver “an in-depth, meticulous, detailed and step-by-step explanation” of the German university’s “scientific research paths” for a branch of the China Academy of Sciences, a state research institute. In addition to these efforts, according to one analysis, Germany is among the top destinations for scientists linked to China’s military seeking further study.

The research priorities run the gamut but focus on science and state-building, Gerry Groot, who studies the United Front at the University of Adelaide, told me. Students, he said, find it hard to refuse because the appeals are framed emotionally and financially, and they play on national loyalties. The latter point is particularly crucial. As William Hannas, James Mulvenon, and Anna Puglisi wrote in their book about China’s technology-transfer program, “Assimilation is apparently not an option nor an avenue to self-respect.” Groot concurred. “If Chinese students go native, so-called, they run the risk of being persecuted by fellow Chinese for wanting to be white,” he said.

According to Yishu Mao, a sociologist at Berlin’s Mercator Institute for China Studies who surveyed 267 Chinese students in German higher-education institutions, most support one-party rule back home (though many also hope civil liberties will expand) and return to China after their studies. For those who stay, a United Front–linked system ensures they can contribute to the motherland: the Federation of Chinese Professional Associations in Europe, a Frankfurt-based umbrella group of 60 Chinese science and technology organizations across the Continent.

Set up in 2001, the federation’s Chinese-language website is up-front: “There is a group of yellow-skinned, black-haired people, among whom are some of the best students and scholars in the world.” Its goal: “To build an interdisciplinary, multi-science, Chinese knowledge group and to contribute to China’s reform and construction.” With offices in Shanghai and Beijing, it offers prizes and the prospect of building professional connections in China, and organizes an annual event for Chinese scientists across Europe; this year’s will focus on artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing and is set for Dublin in October. Last year about 300 Chinese and Finnish officials, scientists, and businesspeople attended an event on building sustainable economies and smart cities in Helsinki.

Yet despite its scale and ambitions, the federation is mysterious. No one answers the bell at its registered address, a three-story home in a Frankfurt suburb. Listed on a peeling doorbell are several organizations linked to the federation’s founder, Zhou Shengzong, a computer scientist who arrived in Germany as a doctoral student in 1988 and now works at a research institute that is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Wan Gang (Thomas Peter / Reuters)

In Helsinki, the United Front’s footprint is apparent: Among the organizers is the Stockholm-based Nordic Zhigong Association, which says on its website it has “long contact with the Zhigong Party of China, and holds all kinds of exchange activities with all Zhigong Party branches and associations overseas.” The party, one of eight approved non–Communist Party groupings in the United Front, is led by Wan Gang, a former minister of science and technology and a vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, China’s top advisory body and itself a United Front–affiliated organization. His background once again points to the importance that Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and an industrial and technological powerhouse, holds for China: An auto engineer, Wan studied and worked here for 17 years.

If anything, as tensions between China and the U.S. deepen, the United Front is growing. Xi has ordered the organization to “strengthen and improve” in the face of “increasingly severe challenges by the West to contain China,” Pan Yue, a senior Communist Party official, said in a speech this month.

“The party injects itself, through the United Front, between Chinese people in Europe and the outside world,” says Peter Mattis, a former CIA analyst who continues to specialize in China at the Jamestown Foundation. “The political logic isn’t what we’re used to in a democratic system.”

China mining accidents

 The risk for coal-mining accidents in China is one of the highest in the world. According to a 2003 government report, the coal miners' death rate per one million population was about 37 times that of America's coal-mining death rate.1,2 However, to date there has been no epidemiologic analysis of nationwide coal-mining accidents reported in the literature. We used eight years of published national coal-mining accident data to analyze the patterns and characteristics of coal-mining accidents. The results are intended to provide useful information to evaluate the safety of coal mines and formulate specific prevention measures.

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METHODS

Data

The study data were derived from China's national coal-mining safety accident report, released by the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety from January 1, 2001, through December 31, 2008.1 The project team spent approximately one year extracting, completing, and analyzing the data, which included 9,037 accidents reported from 30 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions of China, with a total of 23,418 deaths and 2,498 related injuries.

Analysis

After extraction, the data were transformed into a Microsoft® Excel database. We performed analyses on the frequency of accidents and the number of related deaths by percent distribution, secular trend, type of accident, mortality (per one million population), and geographic distribution. We analyzed the data using Chi-square tests.

We calculated the annual mortality rate of coal-mining accidents per one million population as the annual number of deaths related to coal-mining accidents divided by the national population of China (estimated to be 1.3 billion from recent national census data) times one million. We calculated the annual mean number of deaths per coal-mining accident as the annual number of deaths related to coal-mining accidents divided by the annual number of coal-mining accidents.

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RESULTS

We found a dramatic decline in both coal-mining accidents and deaths since 2006 (Figure 1), with a significant difference in the changes over time (χ2=55.17, p<0.05). The mean mortality rate per year was 2.25 per one million population. In recent years, coal-mining accident mortality rates have declined, while the mean number of deaths per accident has increased (Figure 2).

Figure 1.

Number of coal-mining accidents and deaths in China, by year: 2001–2008

Figure 2.

Mortality rate of coal-mining accidents and mean number of deaths per accident in China, by year: 2001–2008

Coal-mine collapse was responsible for the highest frequency of deaths from 2001 to 2008 (n=4,653). Table 1 shows that collapse and machinery caused significantly more accidents and deaths than did other types of coal-mining incidents (χ2=39.83, p<0.05). The number of accidents caused by collapse and machinery declined in the last years, as did the number of accidents caused by nearly all coal-mining incidents. Furthermore, collapse and machinery declined in percentage of accidents.

Table 1.

Type of coal-mining accidents in China by year, 2001–2008

Gas explosions contributed to the highest number of deaths (n=8,013). From 2001 to 2008, there were seven gas explosions, each of which caused more than 100 casualties. Table 2 shows that gas explosions and collapses were associated with the majority of deaths, and that deaths associated with these causes declined starting in 2006.

Table 2.

Number of deaths by type of coal-mining accident in China, by year: 2001–2008

As shown in Table 3, gas explosion accidents were the most severe in terms of numbers of fatalities per accident. In the past eight years, the country reported that 80% of fatal coal-mining accidents, which caused more than 30 deaths, were mostly due to gas explosions, and collapse had the highest frequency in all coal-mining accidents.

Table 3.

Severitya of coal-mining accidents (n=9,037) in China by type of accident, 2001–2008

aSeverity was measured by the number of deaths per accident.

There are currently about 12,777 coal mines in China. Figure 3 shows coal-mining accidents and deaths in relation to their geographic distribution. There are more than 1,000 coal mines in the provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Shannxi, Hunan, and Heilongjiang, and the coal-mining accident death rates in these provinces are significantly higher than in other provinces.

Figure 3.

Geographic distribution of coal-mining accidents in China, 2001–2008a

aProvinces where coal-mining accidents were significantly higher than other provinces

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DISCUSSION

In China, there appears to have been a decrease both in coal-mining accidents and deaths since 2006. This decline can be attributed to efforts by the Chinese government to improve the country's coal-mining safety. Facing a severe coal-mining safety situation, the State Council has issued a series of regulations to strengthen the surveillance of coal-mining safety. To intensify efforts in work safety supervision, the State Administration of Production Safety has been promoted to be the General Administration of Production Safety, and the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety has been put under its jurisdiction. As part of this move, local governments are assigning people to supervise the work safety of collieries and all coal mines to ensure that they strictly abide by safety production standards. China's Premier, Wen Jiabao, typically convenes special safety meetings to work on measures to improve work safety in coal mines, where major accidents involving high casualties and economic losses have occurred with alarming frequency in the past years. Three billion Yuan ($36 million U.S.) has been devoted to technological renovation on coal-mining work safety—gas management in particular—at major state-owned coal mines.

However, to meet the needs of rapid economic growth and the rising demands for coal, the Chinese coal-mining industry has dramatically increased its production since 2006. The recovery of the price of coal at domestic and international coal markets is also driving the economic interests of coal mines. Some mines have become preoccupied with overproduction and neglected safety. As a result, several serious safety concerns persist, including: (1) a severe shortage of safety professionals, especially technical personnel with college-level training in safety production; (2) the accumulation of safety hazards from years of overproduction and lack of corresponding investments in safety measures; (3) the complex mining conditions for many coal seams and increasing difficulty in preventing the outburst of coal and gas, as well as water leakage, after years of exploration and expansion of the production field; and (4) the lack of management, appropriate planning, and an occupational safety system among small, private coal mines.

Gas released during coal mining is primarily composed of methane, which, when mixed with coal dust, can dramatically increase the intensity of an explosion. The incomplete reaction of coal dust can also release poisonous gases, thereby resulting in more casualties and property losses. Our results indicated that higher priority should be given for the prevention and control of these two types of accidents. Historically, to prevent major gas accidents, the government often sent safety supervision teams to major coal mines with serious gas problems and invited colliery safety experts to evaluate safety situations in coal mines with the potential for dangerous explosions and formulate specific prevention measures. In China, great attention is generally paid when any accident causes more than 10 casualties. Our study identified a high occurrence of accidents resulting in eight or nine deaths. In a total of 382 accidents, more than nine deaths were reported.3 Given their large social impact and generally serious economic losses, these accidents should be the focus of prevention and control efforts. Chinese authorities need to work hard to improve their performance and promote best practices by identifying inconsistencies in coal-mining accident death reporting in the future.

China had 28,000 coal mines at the end of 2005, of which 2,000 were state-owned. Because the number of coal-mining fatalities is unacceptably high, particularly due to the number of unregulated small coal mines, Chinese authorities had closed 12,209 unsafe small coal mines by the end of 2008, leaving only 12,777 regulated coal mines. Hainan Province is the only region that reported no coal-mining accidents. Sichuan Province, Hunan Province, and the Chongqing municipal area reported the highest numbers of coal-mining accidents, and the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, and Shanxi reported the highest number of deaths caused by coal-mining accidents. These statistics may be related to the natural coal production conditions in these provinces, which generally bear many risk factors. The design and production process does not align with the geological structure in many mines, which inevitably leads to future disasters. This risk is further confounded by out-of-date mining technology and lack of investment in safety production among local private coal mines. It is exacerbated by the unbanned, destructive, and predatory exploitation that has caused the destruction of the normal coal structure, as well as the lack of a strong, effective coal-mining safety monitoring and inspection system.

Limitations

This study had several limitations. Prior to 2000, reports of coal-mining accidents generally lacked accurate information on accident statistics. Therefore, there may be serious selection and information bias.4 The published literature related to coal-mining safety in China has been limited to a few mines or work-related injuries.5 To the best of our knowledge, there are no nationwide statistics on coal-mining accidents. In this study, the data were taken from the National Bureau of Coal Mine Safety and covered all 30 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in China during an eight-year period. As such, there may have been some selection and information bias. But, according to the report entitled “Report, Investigation, and Handling of Production-Related Accidents,” which was drafted by the State Council in China on April 9, 2007, it is required that any accidents occurring during production and business activities that result in personal injury or economic loss should be investigated by the government agency that is in charge of the oversight of production safety,6 and that the results of this investigation shall be reported and made public. Therefore, the reliability level of the data used in this study was reasonably accurate as an appropriate epidemiologic term.

Reports related to coal-mining accidents from other countries are also scarce. For some comparison, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the frequency of underground coal-mining accidents and related mortality rates in the U.S. from 1900 to 2006. The report shows that U.S. coal miners' deaths per 200,000 hours of work was 0.04.2 Data on China before 2000 were not readily available. Before 2000, reports of coal-mining accidents generally lacked accurate information on accident statistics. Even so, China lags far behind developed countries in terms of coal-mining safety, as statistics on deaths per one million population show that Chinese miners are dying at a rate that is about 37 times the rate of America's coal-mining fatalities. In European countries such as Russia, Poland, and the Ukraine, coal-mining accidents were reported more often than in other European countries,7–9 showing that coal mining remains a very hazardous industry worldwide.

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CONCLUSIONS

Although the Chinese government has made great efforts to increase coal-mining safety, and the number of deaths has decreased since 2006, the death rate and the total number of coal-mining deaths are still very high. The risk for coal-mining accidents in China is still one of the highest in the world. Accident prevention is critical and should be strengthened. China needs to effectively integrate scientifically based safety protection measures into the production process. The National Mining Medical Center is responsible for conducting emergency medical care according to the guidelines of the National Emergency Preparedness Plans for Industrial Safety Accidents as well as the Mining-Related Disaster Medical and Emergency Rescue Plan. Our results may provide useful information to help improve prevention and control measures for coal-mining safety in the future.