Chemical industry sees fewer deaths

Risks loom large, however, as plants relocate to less-developed regions

China has managed to greatly reduce the number of accidents and casualties in its chemical industry, the world's largest, since a deadly blast killed 78 people in 2019, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management.

Risks, however, still loom large as the catastrophe accelerated the relocation of chemical plants to relatively undeveloped regions with inadequate safety management capabilities, said Sun Guangyu, a ministry official dealing with the supervision of hazardous chemicals.

"Thanks to the joint endeavors of various government bodies, production safety in the hazardous chemical sector has been continuously stable," he told a news conference on Tuesday.

Last year, 122 accidents occurred in the chemical industry across the country, down 15.3 percent from 2020 and 25.6 percent from 2019, he said. The accidents claimed 150 lives, compared with 178 in 2020 and 274 in 2019.

"There has been no especially serious accident in the sector for more than 30 months, which is the longest time span ever recorded with no such accident in the country," Sun said.

In China, especially serious accidents usually refer to those that claim more than 30 lives, seriously injure over 100 or cause economic losses that exceed 100 million yuan ($15.7 million).

A devastating explosion at the Tianjiayi chemical plant in Xiangshui, Jiangsu province, on March 21, 2019, killed 78 people. A year later, the central authorities issued a guideline to enhance production safety in the hazardous chemical industry. Various efforts have been rolled out since then, Sun said.

Aside from hammering out tailor-made measures for each of the country's 601 chemical industrial parks, he said authorities across the country have shut down small, illegal chemical plants, upgraded outdated ones, suspended operations of enterprises with safety hazards so that they can be rectified and moved plants out of densely populated areas.

He said efforts have also been made to promote intelligent management. A risk monitoring and early warning system, for example, has been established and put into operation.

Sun warned, however, that accidents have been on the rise in central, western and northeastern China, as hazardous chemical plants have been increasingly moving to such regions from coastal areas in the wake of the Xiangshui explosion.

"The accident has accelerated the relocation process," he said.

Since 2019, 632 projects have been transferred to those regions, with another 470 relocation projects expected to go into operation this year.

The production processes of a large proportion of the relocated plants are highly risky. Inadequate supervision and a lack of safety management personnel with necessary expertise in some of the regions have made ensuring production safety even more difficult, he said.

"If risk management and control is not conducted properly, China will very likely enter an accident-prone period," he said.

Sun said a special yearlong campaign will be rolled out in 21 provincial-level regions in central, western and northeastern China. One of the campaign's priorities will be to raise the threshold for admittance of chemical plants in such regions and ensure that no outdated, high-risk projects are brought in.

The ministry will reexamine risk assessments for chemical industrial parks in such regions and take measures to minimize safety hazards before the end of this year, he said.