China: Safety last?

Residents walk past in front of Lanjisu Cyber Cafe where 24 people, most of them students, died on Sunday

(CNN) -- More than two decades into the swing of economic reform, the pursuit of profit often drives construction, production and business enterprises too fast for safety regulators to keep up with -- and China's labor force and paying public is paying the price.

China's mines are among the most dangerous in the world, leading authorities to push for better, more enforceable regulations. (China's uphill battle on safety)

Meanwhile entertainment, business and shopping facilities are often built so fast that basic fire safety is overlooked -- a point brought painfully home to the relatives of 24 people killed when a blaze broke out at an unlicensed Internet café in Beijing on Sunday.

Tucked away in a university district, the business was one of an estimated 2,400 cyber cafés that have sprouted up in the Chinese capital in recent years.

The trouble is that less than 200 are believed to meet all safety standards.

In the latest deadly blaze, customers were trapped by iron bars that covered windows and other escape exits.

Investigations have begun into the blaze and the Mayor of Beijing Liu Qi has ordered the city's cyber cafes closed while new regulations are drawn up. (Full story)

Too common

A disco fire in 2000 in Luoyang claimed more than 300 lives

While the legislative action may go some way towards helping prevent another similar incident, more is needed to improve China's disastrous safety record where reports of deadly blazes have become all too common.

Despite warnings and calls to improve safety, nearly every Lunar New Year, where firecrackers dominate celebrations, dozens of people are killed and injured in fire related deaths. In February 2002, more than 700 blazes broke out in Beijing alone.

In March of this year a fire swept through a market and nearby apartments in China's southwestern Sichuan province, killing at least 19 people. The building at the source of the outbreak had been told to upgrade fire-fighting equipment and improve fire escapes. Tragically, the owners had failed to heed the order.

But perhaps the most significant and disastrous inferno occurred less than two years ago, bringing with it promises of a new era for safety in the communist nation.

In one of the worst fires of its kind in the past decade, more than 300 people died in a blaze the day after Christmas 2000 in a disco in the city of Luoyang in Henan province.

The fire was made all the more deadly because of the poisonous gases created when building materials in the lower floors of the building rose to suffocate party goers at the top floor disco.

A few who dared to jump survived -- most died of smoke inhalation. Many of the bodies were found piled at the disco's only fire exit.

It was locked.

More than 300 people crammed into the ill-ventilated room with no fire escapes and no sprinklers.

Safety campaign

Firemen inspect the still smoldering factory in the suburbs of Beijing in February. More than 700 fires were reported in one week of New Year festivies in the Chinese capital

Grieving relatives hit the streets in the days that followed, peacefully protesting local inaction when it became clear the building had repeatedly failed fire inspection, yet had been allowed to operate.

Thousands of angry relatives in the streets of Luoyang and lining up at the morgue to identify the bodies of their loved ones reminded authorities that a lack of official accountability could galvanize public sentiment.

Arrests were made and an investigation launched.

A nationwide safety campaign was announced in the days that followed -- but as in many other cases it was clear that prevention, lay not in more regulations but in more consistent enforcement.

Six years earlier, in December 1994, 323 people, most of them children, died in a concert hall blaze in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China's far west.

Just a month before that, 233 were killed in a dance hall in Liaoning province, many of them crushed or asphyxiated inside emergency exits that were chained shut.

In China's worst fire on record, nearly 700 died in a 1977 blaze in Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

Safety regulations are all well and good, but it seems that until proper enforcement takes place, China's safety record has little hope of improving.

-- CNN Correspondent Lisa Rose Weaver contributed to this report