The Qiqihar disaster and China's infrastructure issues
Hollow bricks and wobbling towers are features, not anomalies, in the story of China’s development. How dangerous is Chinese infrastructure?
At the end of July, eleven people, including several children, were killed when the roof of a school gymnasium collapsed in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang province. According to reports: “construction workers illegally placed perlite, a mineral with high water content and which can absorb water, on the roof of the gymnasium during construction of a teaching building adjacent to the gymnasium…Under persistent rains, the perlite soaked up water and gained weight, resulting in the roof collapse.” Some locals had apparently voiced concerns about the materials placed on the roof, but no action was taken.
We’ve discussed in a previous podcast about how China’s housing market may be in danger due to both delays in construction and the poor quality of materials used to build apartments. Shoddy construction materials and practices extend to the entire industry, and are exacerbated during major weather events that expose Chinese cities’ lack of preparedness for floods and earthquakes.
Just after the Qiqihar, parts of Beijing and Fujian province were submerged as typhoon Doksuri ravaged the coast at the end of last month, causing many to flee from their homes. Just this week, another typhoon, Khanun, caused unprecedented rainfall in China’s northeast, leading to a deadly mudslide in Xi’an, which has officially killed at least 21 people.
These events call into question the state of China’s infrastructure, including the quality of materials and work produced by its huge construction industry. China’s cities have grown at a rapid rate over the past few decades – a miracle that has wowed the world and made many invest in China as the potential frontrunner of the new geopolitical landscape. But before it can truly claim that place, it has to ensure that it has built a safe and sustainable country that won’t crumble at the slightest tremor.
Disasters abound
On top of more general problems with infrastructural quality and construction oversight, China’s cities also have issues when it comes to disaster risk management. In 2021, in a situation similar to that of recent typhoons, the city of Zhengzhou was struck by major flooding after heavy rains, with viral videos capturing horrifying scenes of deluged subway trains, lifeless bodies, and sinkholes swallowing cars into the abyss. In 2008, over 5,000 children died when their school buildings collapsed due to a huge earthquake in Sichuan province. While no one could have predicted – or prevented – the earthquake, the cause of the collapse was linked back to shoddy construction materials, corruption, and regulatory negligence. Instead of punishing those responsible, the CCP arrested the investigator who tried to bring justice to the families of victims.
Disaster management is a weakness for the CCP, despite the fact that China is a large country with many different geological profiles and topologies, and a long and well-recorded history of natural disasters. Even in this modern day however, poor early-warning mechanisms and even slower decision-making processes only serve to compound a weak infrastructural base. An examination of the Zhengzhou subway shows that while a flood would have been manageable, an extreme event would always have lead to disaster:
The Zhengzhou Metro subway system was designed to meet central government drainage standards — but only for the type of storm that, under earlier assumptions, should have had a one-in-50 chance of occurring in a given year.
By contrast, Zhengzhou meteorologists estimate that a downpour like the one in July had less than a one-in-1,000 chance of occurring in a year — though China’s national meteorological agency cautioned that the country only has reliable records dating to the early 1950s.
City officials had conducted emergency drills for heavy flooding, but not for a cataclysmic deluge, said Mr. Kong of China Agricultural University.
A vulnerable point in the subway system, officials have said, was a retaining wall built in an area that the city identified more than a decade ago as prone to flooding… As the cloudburst raged, water sluiced down the slope. The wall collapsed. Water poured into tunnels used to bring trains aboveground for cleaning and repair, filling Line 5, one of the system’s newest and busiest.
One study found that cities were completely unprepared for extreme weather events, mainly due to “poor risk communications, disconnections between meteorological warnings and government response, low risk perceptions of extreme weather events, and incomplete contingency plans.” Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, and new laws have been introduced in the wake of 2021 to improve emergency management. However, delays in the chain of communication and the tendency to defer to higher-ups in decision-making means that, in reality, the risk to ordinary citizens remains similarly high.
It’s difficult to hold the CCP accountable for failures in infrastructure that arise from a failure to plan adequately from adverse events. Posts critical of the party or government in the wake of disasters are often censored and removed from social media platforms. Critics and journalists are harassed and arrested, an organised campaign that sometimes encapsulates foreign journalists too. Party officials often visit sites after a disaster, but media reporting is limited, and often contained to singing the praises of disaster relief workers, volunteers, and the party’s overall response to the incident.
But the CCP and Chinese government do need to be held accountable for both the lack of oversight in infrastructure and for improving regulations in the sector. Especially as China’s construction capabilities now affect not only its own citizens but the rest of the world too.
Global ripples
China’s infrastructure problems should be of note not only because of the danger that shoddily built houses poses to Chinese people, but because these companies are now going abroad to export Chinese infrastructure, mainly in developing countries.
Under the Belt and Road programme (BRI), over 150 countries have signed deals with Chinese companies, many of which involve the development of physical infrastructure such as roads, railways, ports, airports, stadiums, hospitals and schools. The majority of these projects will go off without a hitch. China’s railways are famed throughout the world for their speed and safety, and as the country with the most sea freight traffic in the world, China’s state-owned enterprises should be able to build a port without much problem. However, the BRI is not risk-free, and some projects are already beginning to show cracks – figuratively and literally.
Earlier this year, an article in the Wall Street Journal reported on cracks found in the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant in Ecuador due to low-quality construction (as well as the fact that the plant was built near a volcano). Cheap Chinese loans have helped fund huge development projects in poorer countries, acting as a springboard for modernisation and in some cases staving off economic disaster. But as time passes, misgivings other than the potential for countries to fall into a debt-trap situation are beginning to arise:
In Pakistan, officials shut down the Neelum-Jhelum hydroelectric plant last year after detecting cracks in a tunnel that transports water through a mountain to drive a turbine.
The head of the country’s electricity regulator, Tauseef Farooqui, told Pakistan’s senate in November that he was concerned the tunnel could collapse just four years after the 969-megawatt plant became operational… The closure of the plant has already cost Pakistan about $44 million a month in higher power costs since July.
Uganda’s power generation company said it has identified more than 500 construction defects in a Chinese-built 183-megawatt hydropower plant on the Nile river that has suffered frequent breakdowns since it went into operation in 2019. China International Water & Electric Corp., which led construction of the Isimba Hydro Power Plant, failed to build a floating boom to protect the dam from water weeds and other debris, which has led to clogged turbines and power outages… There have also been leaks in the roof of the plant’s power house.
In Angola, 10 years after the first tenants moved into Kilamba Kiaxi, a vast social housing project outside the capital of Luanda, many locals are complaining about cracked walls, mouldy ceilings and poor construction.
“If you see these buildings, they won’t last long,” said Ms. Francisco, a resident in Kimbala Kiaxi. “They’re falling apart bit by bit.”
Regardless of your feelings about the BRI, a risk-reward analysis should be carried out and the proper safety standards should be applied in all cases. The idea that shoddily built buildings and roads are fine because otherwise developing countries would have no buildings or roads at all (a genuine sentiment I’ve seen expressed) is simply not good enough. All people deserve to attend schools that won’t fall on their heads because they’re built on tectonic fault lines so that China can have an outlet for their excess construction materials or to create jobs for SOEs.
Better buildings for all
None of the above is to say that Chinese companies should not be allowed to participate in efforts to build a better, more interconnected world. If anything their involvement is unavoidable – even if Chinese companies did not build the buildings themselves, materials made by Chinese manufacturers are a vital link in the infrastructure chain all around the world. Over half of the world’s cement is made in China, to say nothing of the reliance of developed countries on China’s steel and rare earths.
The problem is not in participation, but in execution. Both Chinese people and people around the world deserve safe, quality housing and facilities, whether they are built by a Chinese SOE or a local construction company, using Chinese materials or otherwise. If China wants to be taken seriously as a new leader on the global development stage, it had better increase its oversight over its construction companies, instead of passing the buck when something goes wrong.
In the case of the Qiqihar school disaster, the government has said that it will hold those responsible accountable for the tragedy. But they shouldn’t stop there. Tighter regulations, better quality control, and, most importantly, a sense of responsibility are all necessary to create a truly towering nation.
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