Policy digest

Hazardous chemicals industry made safer

China has issued a guideline on enhancing the safe production of hazardous chemicals to prevent major accidents and protect people's lives and property. The guideline, published on Wednesday, underscores the importance of strengthening risk controls, management, enterprises' responsibilities, fundamental support, guarantees and supervision to ensure the safe production of hazardous chemicals.

Precise risk screening will be carried out to assess the risks in enterprises, chemical industrial parks and places that produce and store hazardous chemicals, it said. The industrial structure will be further adjusted and factories that don't meet national or industrial safe production standards should be phased out.

Safety controls in key links in the production, transportation and storage of hazardous goods such as oil and gas will be strengthened, and the supervision and control of hazardous waste, including discarded hazardous chemicals, will be improved.

According to the guideline, intentional acts that seriously endanger the safety of people's lives and property, such as evading supervision of safe production and concealing hazardous goods, will be punished and also included in the social credit records of organizations involved and the people in charge of them.

It also stressed the need to boost the application of high-tech solutions, including big data and artificial intelligence, in monitoring and tracking the production, storage, transportation and disposal of hazardous chemicals around the country.

A group of professional and well-established leading enterprises will be cultivated to provide management and technical services for companies in the hazardous chemicals industry, the guideline said.

China posted a stable workplace safety record in the first 11 months of last year, with fewer production-related accidents compared with the same period the previous year, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management.

From January to November, the number of major accidents in China－those that caused three to 10 deaths－dropped 10.4 percent year-on-year, the ministry said.

Focus on educational supervision, guidance

The general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council have issued a guideline for deepening reform of the educational supervision and guidance system and mechanism.

According to the guideline, published on Feb 19, a socialist educational supervision and guidance system and mechanism with Chinese characteristics will be in place by 2022.

It will work efficiently, with full coverage, authoritative results and enhanced accountability for oversight, it said.

The guideline requires efforts to further reform the management system for educational oversight and guidance, including improving the setup of education oversight agencies at all levels, and strengthening supervision of the performance of governments at lower levels in carrying out their educational responsibilities to ensure that the Party and the state's education policies are effectively implemented.

Educational supervision and guidance agencies are urged to develop new ways of overseeing the performance of local governments in carrying out their educational responsibilities as well as educational institutions in running schools, according to the guideline.

Xinhua contributed to the story.