SHANGHAI – Dozens of deaths from the New Year’s Eve crush in Shanghai highlight China’s enduring vulnerabilities even as it races ahead economically, commentators say, with municipal management outpaced by new buildings and advanced transport.
A celebration on the Bund, Shanghai’s signature waterfront, turned deadly on New Year’s Eve, killing 36 people, most of them young women, in the same city that hosted the World Expo in 2010 and saw its stock market surge by more than 50 percent last year.
Shanghai has been at the forefront of China’s decades of rapid development and now boasts the world’s second-tallest building and its first commercial magnetically levitated, or maglev, train, part of the biggest high-speed rail network on Earth.
It is the location of China’s first free trade zone and has stated its intention of becoming an “international city” and a global center for finance, trade and shipping, echoing its history before the Communists took power in 1949.
But despite those major achievements and tall ambitions, residents question how police nevertheless failed to control the crowds that led to the crush, which also injured 49.
Chinese police are not accustomed to handling spontaneous large groups in a country where the communist authorities normally keep strict control of major gatherings.
A comment by a police officer that fewer personnel were dispatched to the Bund for new year than China’s National Day celebration last year has only stoked the controversy.
“I believe this is a major case of negligence by government safety agencies,” said a microblogger using the handle Shenshan Laohan 96886. “Because they made this wrong judgment call, didn’t take measures at the scene, it led to the tragedy.”
Police have said through state media that a more-than-normal 700 officers in the area responded quickly to the incident, despite witnesses who said emergency vehicles had trouble gaining access due to the crowds.
In an unusually critical commentary, Xinhua, China’s own official news agency, said the Shanghai crush was a “wake-up call” about the nation’s push for economic growth at the expense of the people.
“The world’s second-largest economy is still a developing country which has fragile social management,” it said.
“Similar incidents causing heavy casualties are rare in developed countries,” it added, citing mine disasters and industrial accidents as other symbols of the hazards of rapid growth.
But while China is “working on achieving its dream of rejuvenation,” Xinhua said, it remains “no stranger to such incidents.”
The country’s coal mines are among the world’s most dangerous, while factory accidents often occur as owners evade regulations or bribe officials to ignore safety violations.
“Improving people’s lives should become a yardstick against which national development is measured,” Xinhua said. “There is no development worth people’s lives.”
The Shanghai crush was centered on a wide stairway linking a raised riverfront promenade with a plaza below, part of a major urban reconstruction project in the 1990s that transformed the Bund, which began as a muddy towpath in the 19th century.
The changes expanded the area, moved traffic underground and created a tourist attraction.
Peter Hibbard, author of “The Bund Shanghai: China Faces West,” praised the creation of the public space and said it had “caught people’s imagination as a place to go.”
But he added: “The Bund never had the capability of accommodating so many people before.”
The Bund is now packed with high-end restaurants and expensive boutiques, and Shanghai residents traditionally flock there for new year celebrations, with nearly 300,000 packing the area last New Year’s Eve.
More recently, the district government had begun staging official celebrations, and this year’s “countdown” included a light show, performances and fireworks.
But the crush highlighted the mismatch between the city’s growth and its public services. Shanghai’s official population is 24 million, but the number of unregistered migrant workers — who, despite being encouraged to move into the cities are shut out of social services such as health care and education — boost the total.
“There’s a management issue,” said Andy Xie, an independent economist and a Shanghai native. “There are social issues about all of these people flocking to the city.”
“It’s not easy to manage Shanghai . . . There’s nothing like this elsewhere in the world.”
With authorities identifying 35 of the deceased by name, hundreds of family members mourned. On social media and TV, many Chinese were asking how such a tragedy could have happened in the heart of the country’s financial hub.
“I blame myself for it. I did not protect her,” said Zhao Weiwei, the boyfriend of 24-year-old real estate professional Pan Haiqin, his eyes welling with tears. “She was a cheerful woman who worked so hard in this city.”
Her parents and friends identified her trampled body in a city morgue nearly 20 hours later after she died.
Zhao said the crowd descending from the platform crashed into him and his girlfriend and others at the bottom of the 17 steps as they were trying to inch up.
“We were holding hands then, but no way could we resist the force coming down,” he said. “We were separated, and people fell down backward with their faces up, piling on each other. When we were able to pull them out, many were already unconscious.”
Grieving family members and friends say they were kept in the dark about rescue efforts and post-mortem arrangements. They said they had yet to meet or talk with senior city officials. On Friday, many were forced inside a district government compound, with reporters kept out.
“We are basically placed under house arrest,” Cai Jinjin, whose cousin Qi Xiaoyan was killed in the stampede, said before an Associated Press reporter was asked by Shanghai police to leave the compound.
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