After a massive gas well explosion killed 243 people in southwest China last December, China's State Council and National People's Congress have announced new rules for industrial safety. The authorities' response follows a now-familiar pattern: high-profile pronouncements in the wake of workplace disaster give way to neglect of basic safety standards. But if Western experience is any guide, ad hoc responses to high rates of work accidents won't reduce the risks to Chinese workers. Only the development of basic legal institutions will help make Chinese workplaces safer.
China and other developing Asian economies are experiencing an industrial accident crisis of world-historical proportions. Official sources report 14,675 industrial-accident deaths in China in 2003, but statistics on workplace accidents are notoriously unreliable, and some observers suggest that the number may be closer to 120,000.
China's coalmines are among the most dangerous places to work in the world. Chinese garment factories have repeatedly experienced disasters on a par with the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City a century ago, which killed 146 workers, all young women.
By defining today's geopolitics as a clash between democracy and autocracy, the Biden administration risks both empowering America's adversaries and undercutting its allies. And an us-versus-them approach will make it impossible to confront shared global challenges.
worries that the new US administration has centered its strategy on ideology rather than pragmatism.
The prevailing consensus among Israelis that Palestinian nationalism had been defeated – and thus that a political solution to the conflict was no longer necessary – lies in tatters. And even as the violence escalates, it has become clear to both sides that the era of glorious wars and victories is over.
explains why the sudden eruption of Palestinian resistance caught a complacent nation off guard.
After a massive gas well explosion killed 243 people in southwest China last December, China's State Council and National People's Congress have announced new rules for industrial safety. The authorities' response follows a now-familiar pattern: high-profile pronouncements in the wake of workplace disaster give way to neglect of basic safety standards. But if Western experience is any guide, ad hoc responses to high rates of work accidents won't reduce the risks to Chinese workers. Only the development of basic legal institutions will help make Chinese workplaces safer.
China and other developing Asian economies are experiencing an industrial accident crisis of world-historical proportions. Official sources report 14,675 industrial-accident deaths in China in 2003, but statistics on workplace accidents are notoriously unreliable, and some observers suggest that the number may be closer to 120,000.
China's coalmines are among the most dangerous places to work in the world. Chinese garment factories have repeatedly experienced disasters on a par with the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City a century ago, which killed 146 workers, all young women.
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