Twenty-nine miners remain trapped underground after a mine flood in Guangxi, Xinhua reports. No information was reported regarding the cause of the accident.

China’s mining accidents have received a great deal of publicity outside China in the past few years. Is this problem really as severe in China as reports would lead us to believe? Here are some numbers:

• In 2006, the world’s top five coal producers were China, the U.S., India, Australia and South Africa. China’s coal production was 2.5 times America’s, with 2482 Mt* to 990Mt. 78% of China’s power is produced by coal. (World Coal Institute) (*Mt = million tons)
• “In 2003, the average coal miner in China produced 321 tons of coal a year; only 2.2 percent of that in the United States and 8.1 percent that of South Africa. The death rate for every 100 tons of coal, however, is 100 times of that of the US and 30 times that of South Africa.” (People’s Daily)
• According China’s State Administration for Work Safety (SAWS), China produced 35% of the world’s coal last year, but reported 80% of total deaths in coal mine accidents. (China Daily)

These are rather worrying statistics. With China expanding its energy consumption at an ever-increasing rate and relying on coal to provide much of that power, the need for coal is likely to expand–as are the incentives from employers to cut corners to increase production. Tougher mining regulations passed by SAWS in 2006 cut deaths by accidents the next year by 20%, but the number was still a whopping 3,786 of reported deaths.

Then…

I stress “reported” because the truth is that given the nature of the industry, it is relatively easy for employers to conceal isolated deaths. Most miners are migrant workers in the most dire circumstances, who travel to work in the coal mines despite their general reputation in China as death traps. This means that, unlike the U.S., where miners are often have local roots and are unionized, there are few to watch out for the interests of Chinese miners–it would be just as easy to report to a miner’s death as being naturally occurring as being caused by poor safety regulations, in some cases. Keep in mind, of course, that there are absolutely no facts on how often, or if, this ever happens–but the way things work now there is certainly great potential for abuse.

To be fair, however, one might wonder how much the great discrepancy in minings deaths is due to differences in mining methods. Most mining accidents reported in China seem to occur in traditional underground mines, while the trend in America is towards mountaintop removal mining and longwall mining, which involve significantly less safety issues but also have enormous environmental and geographical impact.

So, maybe China is sacrificing individual lives for the greater environmental good? One doubts that this is the intention but, given that America’s EPA recently lowered the value of a human life, you can’t help but worry that the same inhumane calculus of benefit vs. human life is simply being applied in both countries–with the only relevant numbers being dollar signs.

…and now.