After more than 200 days, the vacancy for the most unwanted job in the Chinese Communist Party – Secretary of the Linfen Municipal Party - has been filled. The lucky candidate is Xie Hai, the former Party boss of another Shanxi coal mining town, Yangquan.
Xinhua reported that Xie, 56, has vast experience in the coal mining industry, working in exploration, production and marketing before being appointed Yangquan Party secretary in 2006.
One of Xie’s greatest achievements at Yangquan, Xinhua said, was improving the air quality of the city, increasing the number of “Grade Two” days each year from just seven to 345. This miraculous result probably helped seal the Linfen job for Xie. Linfen is widely acknowledged as the most polluted city in China.
But of course it is not just the pollution that makes the Linfen job so unattractive, the main factor has been the municipality’s appalling mine accident rate. The last Linfen Party secretary, Xia Zhengui was dismissed in September 2008 after the Tashan iron ore mine disaster in Xiangfen county in which 276 people died. And given that, since 2005, the central government has held senior local government and Party officials liable for any mine accident on their patch, it is little wonder no one was queuing up for the job.
Of the 192 major coalmine disasters officially recorded in China between 2003 and 2008, 45 occurred in Shanxi, and nine of those were in Linfen municipality. And this is only major accidents involving more than ten deaths; the vast majority of accidents (often unreported) involve less than ten deaths.
The terrible accident and death rates in Shanxi and Linfen specifically has led to four provincial governors and four mayors being replaced between 2005 and 2008. One mayor was dismissed after 105 miners died in an explosion at a mine in Hongdong county on 5 December 2007. And after the Tashan disaster last September, the Shanxi governor “resigned,” and the Party secretaries of Linfen and Xiangfen were dismissed.
The government has closed down thousands of small and unlicensed mines over the last two years but all this has done is put pressure on the larger mines to produce more coal, and consequently increase the risk of accidents. Linfen, at the very heart of coal country, is a volcano waiting to explode, and Xie Hai is now sitting right on top of it.