Collusion Between Local Officials And Mine Owners Continuing...

Despite a directive to end ownership of coal mines by local officials and senior executives of state owned enterprises, very few have complied and are defying Beijing, according to a commentary in today's Standard.

The directive clearly indicated that Beijing recognizes that collusion between officials and mine owners is the main reason authorities ignore safety rules, and wants to stem it.

According to the toughly worded directive, the officials had to clean up their mess by September 22 or be sacked pending further investigation.

But by the night of September 25, only 497 officials and SOE executives in nine provinces had agreed to give up their stakes in local coal mines, according to the State Administration of Work Safety, which oversees the execution of the State Council's order.

This figure is almost laughable, given that there are 24,000 small, privately run coal mines across the mainland. The administration itself estimates that "a considerable number of these 24,000 coal mines" have local officials as their shareholders.

The writer says that this result is predictable since any official that sells their stakes in these mines, will have to explain, at one point, where they got the money to buy the stake in the first place.

Despite good intentions by Beijing, the troubles in China's deadly coal mining industry are probably not going to be solved any time soon. I suspect that miners will continue to die, needlessly, due to greedy and corrupt local officials short-changing the hard working miners safety.

Furthermore, officials will probably just hide ownership or transfer to relatives or some other vehicle to divert attention away from them. Beijing, surprisingly, appears to have little control over local officials if they are defying this order as the writer claims.