SHANGHAI, China — Tens of thousands of Chinese swarmed Sunday to the site of a high-rise fire that killed 58 people to mourn and quietly criticize a system that allowed illegal contracting and unsafe materials in the heart of China’s most modern city.
Elsewhere in China, 29 miners trapped for nearly a day in a flooded coal mine were lifted to safety, state media said today.
In Shanghai, police were grabbing people by their collars and pulling them away from a designated mourning area if they tried to enter without carrying flowers. People at the scene said there appeared to be no sign of protest, though some groups of agitated locals were discussing the fire and its causes.
China’s officials are highly sensitive to any mass, emotional gathering that could swing into anger and social unrest. Neither China Central Television’s nightly newscast nor the front page of the state-run Xinhua News Agency website mentioned the gathering.
The miners rescued today were trapped Sunday morning after the small Batian mine in southwest China’s Sichuan province suddenly flooded.
State broadcaster China Central Television showed a line of ambulances and large crowds waiting near the entrance to the mine, and medics wrapping a survivor in blankets before carrying him to an ambulance on a stretcher.
China’s mines are the deadliest in the world, with more than 2,600 people killed in coal mine accidents in 2009 alone.
Information for this article was contributed from Shanghai by Ji Chen and from Beijing by Cara Anna and Henry Hou of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 11/22/2010