Chinese dictator Xi Jinping on Monday promoted his “Beautiful China” initiative at a Chinese Communist Party Central Committee meeting, urging the party to build a “modern socialist country in all respects” by 2035.
On the same day, cities in northern China struggled to keep electric power flowing during an early cold snap, and three junior high school students were killed when a gymnasium built in 2018 collapsed.
Xi’s speech to the Central Committee was mostly about bureaucratic reforms that would supposedly help modern socialist China materialize over the next decade, as somewhat tediously summarized by the state Xinhua news service:
Xi also called for strengthening supervision over professionals participating in public decision-making and fostering a vibrant, clean, and positive environment for specialists to participate in public decision-making.
The country, while strengthening top-level design and optimizing related rules, should tailor region-specific regulatory measures to safeguard ecological functions and improve the environment, Xi noted.
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The meeting stressed efforts to encourage more investment from state capital in key industries and sectors that have a bearing on the lifeline of the national economy and national security, as well as sectors of public services, emergency response capacities, and public welfare that concern national development and people’s well-being. It called for strengthening budget constraints and making full use of the role of the people’s congresses in oversight.
Xi made similar remarks at a press conference in July, although on that occasion he put more emphasis on the ecological reforms of “Beautiful China.” Although Xi never admits China has done anything wrong, especially during the decade since he came to power, he tacitly admitted there might be some room for environmental improvement by the world’s worst polluter.
A strong cold front swept across northern China on Monday, bringing freezing temperatures to Beijing and blizzard warnings to northern cities. School classes were canceled in some cities, along with both air and ground transportation.
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Although Xinhua praised local officials who “sprung into action in response to the lingering cold wave that has disrupted people’s lives,” it was clear that the power grid and other infrastructure systems were having trouble coping with the low temperatures and snowfall:
Jilin Province in northeast China, which activated a level-IV emergency response to heavy snowfall on Sunday, faced a power outage that impacted 1.36 million households. The local electricity company promptly dispatched 418 teams, including 3,463 repair workers and 989 vehicles, to fix the power supply problem. By Monday night, power had been successfully restored to nearly 847,000 households.
The provincial capital Changchun had formulated a plan to clear the roads two days before the snowfall, mobilizing nearly 1,700 sanitation workers with snow removal vehicles to ensure road safety for traffic. “We began our work early in the morning and have been continuing for eight hours,” said Liu Shu, a local worker, on Monday evening.
In the northeastern city of Jiamusi on Monday, a gymnasium ceiling collapsed while junior high students were playing basketball, killing three of them. The gym was built in 2018 and certified in 2020. It has been administered by a private fitness club since 2022.
Xinhua reported the owners of the club have been “put under police control” pending the outcome of an investigation into the collapse. The inquiry will be conducted by a “combined investigation team” from the “discipline inspection and supervision departments” of Jiamusi and the surrounding Huanan country.
Monday’s tragedy was the second gym collapse in Heilongjiang province in recent months. In July, the concrete roof of a school gym collapsed in the city of Qiqihar after several days of heavy rain. Investigators said one reason for the roof collapse was a heavy stash of construction materials left on the roof by contractors.
“The collapse of the stadium in Qiqihar was not a long time ago, and there were checks everywhere after that – what did the checks do? This is an apparent man-made disaster,” said a popular comment on social media quoted by the BBC on Tuesday.
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Matt Perdie / Breitbart News“Heilongjiang again, stadium again. Crappy quality, murderer project,” said another dismayed commentator.
The BBC checked government chat logs and found the Jiamusi gym was supposedly inspected in July after the Qiqihar collapse.
Xi’s “Beautiful China” program includes a tacit admission that some of the phenomenally rapid expansions made during China’s boom years were not built to the highest standards of quality or environmental sensitivity.
His challenge will be finding the money to rebuild so much of the new China to even newer, tougher specifications, with the national economy slowing and a massive real estate crisis looming that could severely damage the income stream for China’s local governments.
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