Coal is a major source of energy in China (pic: Wikimedia commons)
Anger is growing after the worst coal mining disaster in China for more than 15 years.
Hundreds of thousands of posts on Weibo, China’s biggest social media site, are demanding justice after a deadly explosion killed 82 people last week.
On Monday, rescue efforts were still underway at the Liushenyu coal mine.
Shanxi, one of China’s poorer provinces, is the centre of the country’s coal-mining industry.
The Chinese state’s ongoing investigation into the blast says that Tongzhou Group, the company operating the mine, had committed “serious illegal violations”.
Tongzhou Group had reportedly received two administrative penalties in 2025 for safety violations. In 2024, the Liushenyu mine was named by the Chinese National Mine Safety Administration in a nationwide list of coal mines with “severe hazards”.
State media reports that blueprints provided by the coal mine to authorities attempting to hunt for survivors did not match the conditions at the mine.
There are also claims that the number of people in the mine at the time of the explosion was double that listed in the company’s official count.
The State Council, China’s cabinet, has ordered nationwide “tough crackdowns on illegal and unlawful activities”.
However, while Communist Party officials might make talk tough, they preside over a state capitalist system that rests on the exploitation of millions of workers.
Miners are risking their lives every day because safety protocols are not treated seriously by bosses and politicians determined to keep profits flowing.
China is the world’s top consumer of coal and the largest greenhouse gas emitter. Mine owners and state-backed corporations alike face enormous pressure to maximise output to feed growth.
This deadly disaster has happened because safety is treated as an obstacle to profits.
Coal miners in China have repeatedly protested over unpaid wages, dangerous conditions and attacks on union organisation.
In 2016, thousands of miners at Shuangyashan mine in northeastern China launched a strike protesting against unpaid wages.
But as independent trade unions are banned by the state, making it hard to organise, the miners killed in Shanxi were not victims of bad luck.
They were victims of an economic system that treats workers only as a source of profit.
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