Shoddy roads under fire after deadly cave-ins

BEIJING - A spate of road collapses, some fatal, in China has aroused personal safety fears as well as concern over shoddy infrastructure construction and poor supervision.

Road cave-ins have been frequently reported since July, since when heavy rain has hit a large number of Chinese cities, testing the urban infrastructure.

In Harbin city in the northeast, seven reported road cave-ins in nine days in mid-August killed two and injured two others. Two vehicles fell into the deep pits. In North China's Shijiazhuang city, 80 road cave-ins have been reported since the major flood season began two months ago.

A Beijing pedestrian was wounded after falling into a pit caused by a road cave-in in the city.

There have also been reports of cave-ins in the northeastern and central cities of Dalian, Changsha and Zhengzhou.

Users of China's Twitter-style microblogging site Sina Weibo have been mocking the frequent cave-ins, which they say "may trap anyone."

"Please cherish people around you. When they are walking in the city, they may suddenly be gone," said one popular entry.

Bloggers have called for the quality of the infrastructure construction, dubbed its "conscience", to be taken seriously.

China's fast development over the past three decades has seen its cities growing and roads extending in the accelerating urbanization drive.

As of 2011, the urban population stood at nearly 700 million in a country in which expanses of highway and numbers of skyscrapers in a city are commonly regarded as one of the most important measures of success.

"The weird situation of 'pedestrians worrying about their safety' is a great irony of a city's high-speed building boom," said Li Xun, deputy head of the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design. "It is also an alarm call for the city's managers."

Amid panic, Chinese urban residents and media have been questioning management and supervision by local governments, who themselves have attributed the serial cave-ins to intense rainfall, extensive pipeline and subway construction and excessive extraction of underground water.

Experts, who see "deeper reasons" for the cave-ins, are urging strengthening of accountability mechanisms in local governments to avoid the recurrence of such tragedies.

"Of course, we should have roads and underground facilities checked and maintained on a regular basis," according to Prof. Li Simin of the Urban Construction School of Hebei University of Engineering. "But we should also be clear about who should be held accountable for each of these tragedies."

Ma Qiaohua, a lawyer in Shijiazhuang, also believes "deeper reasons" for the cave-ins should be dealt with.

"If we deal with every cave-in incident in haste, similar things will keep happening," she predicted.

Meanwhile, there have been no reports of any local government official being sacked or punished since the cave-ins.

A commentary on the website of Shandong Broadcasting and Television Station (www.iqilu.com) on Wednesday said, "An explanation should be given after every cave-in."

"Was it was caused by poor quality, or lack of timely maintenance, or lack of supervision?" asked the commentary, authored by Wen Jinrang, who urged government departments be sparked into action by the cave-ins.

"Anyone who let this happen should take responsibility. Officials with the responsibility of supervision should also be dismissed," Wen wrote.