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China Identifies Executives of Company Linked to Tianjin Explosions Distrust of Chinese Government and Fear of Toxins Follow Tianjin Blasts
(about 4 hours later)
BEIJING — The Chinese authorities have identified 10 senior executives of the company that owns the warehouses involved in explosions nearly a week ago in the northern port city of Tianjin, local news media reported Tuesday, shortly after the national anticorruption agency announced it was investigating the head of the country’s work safety regulator. BEIJING — Within minutes of the immense chemical explosions that sent apocalyptic fireballs into the night sky over Tianjin, Zhou Haisen was making arrangements to leave town. He was terrified that toxic chemicals at the city’s burning port facility would reach his apartment six miles away and kill his entire family.
The announcements came amid mounting public anger over the blasts, which killed 114 people and injured over 700 the night of Aug. 12. The government has promised a transparent investigation into the explosions, which left a massive crater in an industrial zone and raised fears of chemical contamination in the surrounding residential area. The authorities say that at least 57 people are still missing. With his suspicions supported by warnings on Chinese social media about the possibility of poisonous gases from the disaster, Mr. Zhou, 23, university student, fled along with his parents to his grandmother’s house an hour’s drive away.
According to the state-owned newspaper Tianjin Daily, Yu Xuewei, chairman of the company, Rui Hai International Logistics, was detained along with the vice chairman Dong Shexuan, on Aug. 13, several hours after the blasts. Since last Wednesday’s still-unexplained accident, which killed at least 114 people and injured more than 700, the Chinese government has insisted again and again that effective measures are being taken to ensure that the air in Tianjin remained safe. But when it rained on Tuesday, the city’s streets began to foam, and people reported burning sensations on their lips and elbows.
Caijing magazine and the state-owned newspaper Global Times reported that the other people being “controlled” by the police include the company’s president, Li Liang; the vice president, Cao Haijun; Song Qi, chief financial officer; Zhi Feng, general manager; Shang Qingsen, deputy general manager and head of security; and Liu Zhenguo, deputy general manager. An environmental monitoring official denied that those phenomena had anything to do with the explosions, Chinese news outlets reported. Even so, Mr. Zhou will not be going home anytime soon.
It has not been made clear which executives are under formal detention. “Of course, we don’t believe the government about the air,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’re always unwilling to tell the truth. I don’t want to bet my life on their words.”
Six of the executives are being held at the Tianjin No. 1 detention center while four are in the hospital, Caijing reported. “The top level has paid attention to the issue of Rui Hai company, no one dares to say a word,” a police officer told the magazine. Just as the military cleanup crews have been unable to extinguish the smoldering fire at the port, the Chinese authorities have struggled to contain mounting public anger and distrust. The system of information controls they deployed after disasters like the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the 2011 high-speed train crash and the ferry sinking in June does not seem effective this time.
The identities of the executives were released on the same day that China’s anticorruption agency announced on its website that Yang Dongliang, a former deputy mayor of Tianjin who is the head of the State Administration of Work Safety, is currently being investigated for “suspected violations of party discipline and the law,” frequently used as a euphemism for corruption. According to a report in Beijing Youth Daily, however, Mr. Yang has been under investigation for half a year, raising further questions as to why the investigation was just announced. The nation has watched in real time as government censors deleted online investigative reports, erased microblog posts and abruptly cut off a nationally televised news conference after local officials appeared unwilling to answer even basic questions about which dangerous chemicals were at the blast zone and why they had been stored close to residential areas.
State news media also reported on Thursday that Shi Li, director of the Tianjin Harbor Economic Area Management Committee in the Binhai district — where the explosions took place — and Peng Bo, former deputy director of the Land and Resources Bureau in the district, are being investigated for taking bribes. “They are definitely trying to cover it up,” Yuan Ping, 30, a telecommunications worker whose apartment was heavily damaged in the explosions, said in a telephone interview. Ms. Yuan said she and her family were so frustrated by a lack of official support that they were considering suing the government and the company that owned the facility, Rui Hai International Logistics. “I wouldn’t believe even a single word from them,” she said. “The government is doing everything on the surface.”
Protests erupted in Tianjin over the weekend, as residents who had been forced out of their damaged homes joined with relatives of missing firefighters to demand compensation and information about their family members.
Suspicions of a cover-up are so widespread that the Communist Party’s official newspaper, People’s Daily, published an explicit denial and promised a transparent investigation. “What need would there be to hold back and cover up a safety incident?” it said. “How could it be possible for government bureaucrats to shield each other?”
Xinhua, the country’s official news agency, reported on Tuesday that the company’s license to handle hazardous chemicals lapsed in November and that it did not get a new one until June. The authorities also identified 10 senior executives of the company, including the chairman, Yu Xuewei, and the vice chairman, Dong Shexuan, who were detained on Thursday, a few hours after the explosions.
“The top level has paid attention to the issue of the Rui Hai company, no one dares to say a word,” a police officer told Caijing Magazine, which said that four of the 10 executives were in a hospital.
Later on Tuesday, China’s anticorruption agency announced on its website that Yang Dongliang, a former deputy mayor of Tianjin who became the head of the State Administration of Work Safety, was under investigation for “suspected violations of party discipline and the law,” a common euphemism for corruption.
The Beijing Youth Daily reported, however, that Mr. Yang has been under investigation for half a year, raising questions about why the case was announced now. Two other officials are also under investigation for taking bribes.
Rather than depend on official announcements, many Chinese look to social media, where a cat-and-mouse game is played between a public hungry for answers and censors anxious to scrub anything that might reflect poorly on the central government. Mr. Zhou said that even rumors were better than waiting for the authorities to publicly identify all the chemicals or name every firefighter who died in the blasts. “They’re either stupid or pretending to be stupid,” he said of the officials.
As they did after previous disasters, the Chinese authorities have tried to block reporting that made the government appear to be at fault. After the 2008 earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province, the Central Propaganda Department forbade the Chinese news media to report on shoddy school construction, which had led to the deaths of thousands of children in the quake. In 2011, a leaked propaganda directive ordered media not to reflect or comment on the train crash that killed 40 people, saying, “Do not investigate the causes of the accident.”
Public reflection on man-made tragedies is politically risky for the ruling Communist Party, according to David Bandurski, an editor of the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong. “The party leadership is very aware that questions of responsibility in a disaster like this can very quickly move to fundamental issues of power and legitimacy,” he said, explaining that in an authoritarian system, “the buck stops with you.”
Mr. Bandurski noted that censors have struggled to fully control the Tianjin narrative because some Chinese journalists have pushed ahead with their own reporting. “This is a very messy story, and for Chinese media, messy means opportunity,” he said.
Even so, a day after the blasts in Tianjin, censors were already prohibiting the news media from privately gathering information on the accident or adding individual interpretations to official announcements, according to a leaked directive. Instead, the state media has mostly focused on publishing touching articles about the rescue operations, including one in People’s Daily titled “Puppy Saved From Tianjin Explosion Site.”
For Chinese people trying to understand the disaster, seeing a flood of sanctioned memorials and rescue stories without any robust reporting on the cause is frustrating.
“Lighting candles becomes a cheap and well-meaning emotional expression,” Jia Jia, a Chinese journalist and blogger, said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Jia posted a lengthy screed on a social media website a few days after the disaster, calling on his compatriots to demand accountability instead of just sentimentality: “Stop lighting your candles,” he wrote. “Pick up a leather lash, and flog hard those derelict in their duty, who treat human lives like dirt. If you don’t use the whip, then you’re simply waiting until others light a candle for you.”
Censors swiftly deleted it and Mr. Jia’s entire public profile from the website.