(July 1, 2002) ‘Heads are rolling in the wake of the Harbin toxic spill, but it’s not Big Industry that’s getting the chop.’

(excerpt)

Bungling, delay, cover-up. When such missteps follow a major disaster, officials often have to resign. We saw it unfold in the United States after the killer hurricane Katrina. Now we’re seeing heads roll in China, following the Nov. 13 chemical plant explosion that killed five people and spilled 100 tons of benzene-like carcinogens into the Songhua River. There are sackings, and then there are sackings. In China, who’s getting the axe and how – bureaucratically speaking, that is – holds greater symbolic and political significance than in many other countries. Here, all eyes are focused on the fallout of the massive chemical spill that forced Harbin city’s four million residents go without running water for five days – and that now is slated to float by the Russian city of Khabarovsk this weekend. Much is at stake. Even Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, on an official visit to Paris, referred to the Harbin pollution in a lament over the high number of industrial accidents on the mainland, and confessed that he’d stayed up until nearly midnight “reviewing documents” about the chemical spill the night before leaving for France.

Newsweek, July 1, 2002