Collapse exposes corruption among regulators

A television special that aired on Monday exposed the corruption and misconduct of some officials in Changsha, Hunan province, who through neglect were partially responsible for the illegal construction and collapse of a residential building that led to many deaths.

On April 29, 2022, an eight-story illegally built residential building collapsed in Wangcheng district of Changsha, resulting in 54 deaths and nine injuries, and direct economic losses of 90.8 million yuan ($12.8 million).

Ultimately, a total of 66 officials were held accountable, 20 departments were ordered to conduct effective corrections, and another 14 people, including the building owner and staff from a structural testing company, were held in custody.

The building was owned by locals Wu Qisheng and his son Wu Zhiyong. They initially constructed a five-story building in 2012 and later expanded it to eight stories in 2018 using unqualified workers and without obtaining any approvals from relevant authorities, leading to severe structural and quality issues.

Wu Qisheng died in the collapse, and Wu Zhiyong was arrested. The case is ongoing.

"We were stupid, and really committed a sin. I didn't know the difference between a solid wall and an empty brick wall until after the accident," said Wu Zhiyong.

While the owners' lawlessness was partly to blame, the necessary supervision was lacking from the beginning. Since 2016, the central government and the Hunan provincial government deployed six inspections looking for illegally constructed buildings, yet this deadly structure evaded all of them.

The first two failures were due to the district changing its administrative division, leading to authorities excluding it from the scope of rectification.

Lu Shan, former head of the Hunan Provincial Housing and Urban-Rural Development Department, admitted that the department indeed had been negligent. The change in its administrative division might have caused omissions in one or two processes, but the following inspections should have found the problems.

In addition, other departments with regulatory responsibilities for illegal construction failed to coordinate effectively and instead engaged in mutual evasion of responsibilities.

Over the years, the government has not taken the issue of self-built houses seriously, and various departments engaged in mutual evasion and blame-shifting, said Chen Wenhao, former vice-governor of Hunan province and former mayor of Changsha.

"I should bear the responsibility for the omission of oversight and lack of governance," said Chen.

Zhou Zhengmao, former deputy head of Wangcheng district, said that many existing illegally constructed buildings pose safety hazards, and it's difficult to solve this problem. So, everyone took a chance, as long as nothing happened on their watch.

The Wu family dared to illegally expand the property due to weak oversight, and all they needed to do was avoid urban management officers.

Wu recalled that if urban management officers found many people carrying out illegal housing extensions, they would stop the construction.

They verbally warned the Wu family on six occasions, with only one instance involving an official rectification notice requiring an immediate halt to construction and a meeting with the urban management team.

However, the Wu family did not attend the meeting and continued construction in secret, and the team's former head Leng Jingke did not take the matter seriously.

"At that time, I indeed forgot about this matter. I was careless and I admit that it was my negligence. My soul will be deeply condemned for the rest of my life because of this," said Leng.

In July 2020, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development started a one-year nationwide operation targeting illegal construction. However, the Hunan provincial housing department forwarded the notice two months later, Changsha issued its rectification plan six months later, and Wangcheng district's actions started one year later.

In reality, the district did not conduct any inspections and fabricated the data. On June 29, it reported inspecting 217 buildings, then changed it to 81,668 buildings six days later, and reduced it to 18,238 buildings a month later.

Escaping the inspection, Wu's additional construction was rented out to tenants for restaurants, private cinemas and family inns. A company named Xiangda Engineering Testing issued an appraisal for the building, claiming it "met safe usage conditions", helping the tenants to obtain a family inn operating certification.

Investigations revealed that the company was recommended by Liu Wanquan, former deputy head of public security management under the Wangcheng public security subbureau. The company paid Liu for his recommendation.

"It offered me a total of 23,000 or 25,000 yuan. As a law enforcer, I allowed myself to fall for these petty gains and cheap advantages. I didn't uphold the bottom line of discipline and the law," said Liu.

The company provided appraisals for over 20 buildings within a day, without any professional equipment. Yet the company lacked the appraisal ability and obtained its certifications by bribing officials from the Hunan Provincial Market Regulation Bureau.

After the major incident, in just one month, the district identified 7,180 buildings with illegal expansions, contributing to the overall 44,000 illegal buildings discovered in Changsha.

About two hours before the accident, some tenants noticed cracks in the walls and reported them to the Wu family, who still believed that some steel reinforcements would be sufficient.

"I will never find peace in my life. I can only give an analogy: If I were a teenager in my 20s, and someone else's home collapsed and caused my death, what would my family feel? I can imagine the sadness," said Wu.

The four-episode anti-corruption special was produced by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the National Commission of Supervision, China's top anti-graft agencies, and China Central Television. The series began airing on CCTV-1 on Saturday night, and the third episode, titled Improving Party Conduct and Enforcing Party Discipline, was broadcast on Monday.