The Chinese government and BOCOG desperately need to start listening to all the really smart, well-paid foreign PR firms they’ve hired if they want to avoid continually getting caught with their pants at ankle-height:
To whit:
January 20
The Sunday Times publishes an article claiming that at least 10 workers had been killed in the construction of the Olympic “Bird’s Nest” Stadium here in Beijing. The Times arrives at this figure through interviews with employees from the site.
Witnesses have told The Sunday Times of seeing workers plummet to their deaths from the perilous heights of the stadium, which was designed by a consortium including Arup, the British engineering firm, and Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architects.
The bodies were swiftly removed by police, who sealed off accident scenes with orange tape and cleared other workers from the area while the dead were loaded into police vehicles, witnesses said.
Managers and police ordered the workers not to mention the deaths to anyone and not to talk about the accidents among themselves.
The usual-suspect trolls show up in the comments section of the Times article:
This is yet another cheap shot at running down the China Olympics, disguised as investigative reporting.
Oh yes, there is always a big cover up whenever the chinese communists are concerned.
Yet not a shred of evidence is seen in this report.
Refreshingly, others weigh in with a different perspective:
I’m shocked by this article, and i can imagine that all the descriptions concerning the problems in China are real. I’m very sad for the dead workers,and their names should be memorized by the peoples who believe and behavor the Olympic spirit.Strongly demand for the amelioration of working conditions by chinese government!!!
January 21
Shocked and angered by the Times story, BOCOG fires back the next day. Responding to questions from members of the foreign press corps, BOCOG spokesman Sun Weide states:
“First of all the report by the Sunday Times is not true,” he said. “Secondly, the Beijing municipal government and BOCOG attach great importance to the safety of the Olympic venue construction… and we have taken resolute measures to ensure safety, quality control and timeline…Construction of the National Stadium is going according to plan and under proper safety standards,”
Source AFP.
January 22
Still facing questions on the Sunday Times’ allegations, Minister of the State Administration for Work Safety, Li Yingzhong says his ministry is willing to investigate claims of deaths at the stadium and that if the claims turn out to be true, there will be repercussions. (李叔很生气，后果很严重, to borrow a phrase.)
Source: BBC
On the same day, Hu Jintao calls on officials and cadres to step up propaganda work to improve stability at home and China’s image abroad. “We should work hard on external propaganda to further display and improve a positive state image.”
Source The Guardian
January 28
Officials finally admit that there were deaths at the Worker’s Stadium, but 6 not 10, and not all at the Stadium, but at other places, and some were injured but not killed, and we did pay them off, but didn’t buy their silence and…yeah.
A Chinese official said Monday that six workers have died over the last five years working on venues for the Beijing Olympics. Ding Zhenkuan, deputy chief of Beijing’s Municipal Bureau of Work Safety, said two of those deaths took place in 2006 and 2007 at the 91,000-seat National Stadium. He did not specify where the other deaths took place.
He also said there was one injury that required hospitalization and three that did not.
Source: AP
It’s tragic that the workers died and my thoughts go out to the families of the victims. Unfortunately, construction–especially on a project the scale of an Olympic venue–is a hard and dangerous job. As most reports noted, there were fatalities in Athens in 2004 and Atlanta in 1996. What went wrong here in Beijing was the knee-jerk reaction by BOCOG to play cover-up at the first sign of trouble. It’s an impulse that if left unchecked I promise is going to come back and bite them on the ass this summer when waves of foreign press come rolling into town. If they had simply announced the deaths as they happened this would have been a non-story in the foreign media. I don’t want to downplay the loss of life here, but the story really wasn’t about the workers, it was about how BOCOG handled the PR crisis. In essence: BOCOG became the story.
I wonder too if there might not be a disconnect between BOCOG and the government ministries. It was BOCOG who issued the early denials, but by mid-week, the Ministry of Work Safety had stepped in, and in the end it was a representative from the Beijing Municipal government who issued the statement admitting that there had been fatalities. I’d be interested in how that all went down behind the scenes.
It’s the Olympics. It’s a giant celebration and for good reason, but thousands of athletes, fans, journalists, and politicians are coming to Beijing all at once for two weeks in August. There are going to be problems and hassles and crises as there always will be with an event of this size, it’s the cost of doing business. But that said, China will be judged not just for what goes right, but for how the Chinese government handles the situation when things go wrong. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr: The ultimate measure is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of crisis and challenge. There will be challenges during the games, and BOCOG needs to be ready to face those challenges with candor and openness.
12 responses so far ↓
1 ScottLoar // Jan 29, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Face, face, face.
2 Jeremiah // Jan 29, 2008 at 8:06 pm
I agree.
As much as I hate to essentialize, I’m sure that’s a big part of it.
3 Froog // Jan 30, 2008 at 11:27 am
One of the most worrying aspects of the Chinese concept of ‘face’ (is it as extreme in other Asian cultures??) is the prevalence of the belief that you can ’save face’ by concealing your mistakes.
The Chinese seem to be very slow to learn that - in the eyes of most foreigners, at least - they ‘lose face’ by lying.
If these figures now released for fatalities on the Bird’s Nest construction are true (still a bit muddled, aren’t they? is it 6 deaths or 2 or…?), it’s a remarkably low figure. Suspiciously low, I would say. I’d be prepared to bet that there were a few more fatal accidents that happened on the site, but not within the stadium itself - or perhaps that the victims were posthumously ‘reassigned’ to other projects to protect the ‘no deaths’ record of the Bird’s Nest. These are the sort of subterfuges the Chinese authorities routinely use to massage their statistics.
If these figures are true, however, congratulations are in order. The project’s organisers must really have taken some trouble to tighten up on training and supervision, safe working procedures and equipment. Such care on the major Olympic venues is not widely repeated on the other construction projects around the city. It is impossible to obtain any (reliable) figures for industrial accidents in this sector, but I have heard speculation from people in the industry that construction worker deaths across the whole city probably run to at least the hundreds, and probably over 1,000 per year.
4 Jeremiah // Jan 30, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I think your pessimistic and optimistic halves may both be correct. I wouldn’t be shocked at subterfuge to hide potentially embarrassing stories from the press. At the same time, I do think that Olympic venues are probably more carefully supervised than usual construction sites. Though the report in the Times mentioned usage of several layers of subcontractors in the rush to finish the job which certainly suggests that corners will still be cut on Olympic sites as well when necessary.
5 wu ming // Jan 30, 2008 at 5:45 pm
One of the most worrying aspects of the Chinese concept of ‘face’ (is it as extreme in other Asian cultures??) is the prevalence of the belief that you can ’save face’ by concealing your mistakes.
The Chinese seem to be very slow to learn that - in the eyes of most foreigners, at least - they ‘lose face’ by lying.
i fail to see how this distinguishes chinese or asian culture from our own political or corporate ruling class. who doesn’t want to lose face, or cover up their shortcomings?
6 jason // Jan 31, 2008 at 11:12 am
You probably would like to check out how many people died to build the Empire State Bldg. And, the Niao-chao stadium is not any less iconic a piece of architecture than it.
7 Jeremiah // Jan 31, 2008 at 11:24 am
Jason,
Absolutely. As I said in the post, construction is a dangerous business no matter where you are in the world. (Some places are safer than others, but you know what I mean.)
I don’t think that the foreign press is criticizing BOCOG for the deaths (as tragic as those were), it’s the impulse to hide those deaths from public view that most find galling and a bit worrisome.
8 Jeremiah // Jan 31, 2008 at 11:27 am
Wu Ming,
I agree that “face” is something that occurs in most cultures, American not excepted, however I would have trouble arguing that face isn’t especially important in the the Chinese cultural and political context.
9 Froog // Feb 1, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Wu Ming,
Of course the impulse to ‘cover up’ mistakes is a universal phenomenon, a worldwide problem; but it seems to me that the Chinese notion of ‘face’ makes this impulse particularly strong, dangerously so. It is both strangely abstract (often utterly divorced from the practical considerations that would usually prompt such behaviour from politicians or corporate bosses in the West) and so deeply ingrained that it seems to become an unconscious imperative.
Sure, I may be making a flippant exaggeration for the sake of argument here, but it does often seem to me as though, whereas your typical multi-national CEO might take some time to weigh up the pros and cons of a cover-up, in China lying almost always seems to be the automatic first response.
And you get that in everyday life, at every level of society, not just from cadres and businessmen. People caught out in any small goof will just lie their ass off rather than admit and apologise.
10 The Humanaught // Feb 1, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Very well said.
Re: Face - I agree with Froog. Eddie Izzard has a great comedic bit, involving a dog being thrown out a window, on how when we were kids we would deny we had any part in something that was “bad” even if it was strikingly obvious it was our fault. However, when you become an adult, at least in Western culture, it’s look upon as a sign of maturity if you can owe up to your mistakes and admit your faults.
Does everyone? Of course not. Is it more acceptable and common in Western culture, I would say so.
I also agree that this face saving division from reality happens at every level of society and in every day life.
@Jason: The Empire State Building was built nearly 80 years ago - the comparison is way out there. The world didn’t even have penicillin or a space program, never mind solid health and safety in the workplace seminars.
11 Jeremiah // Feb 1, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Ryan,
Thanks for the compliment and some good points raised, I’ll be interested to see the responses.
12 Rick // Feb 14, 2008 at 10:24 pm
great post.
and congrats on the new .com
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