A blast in Tianjin sets off an explosion online

THE most remarkable feature of the aftermath of the explosions in Tianjin, in northern China, has been the extraordinary contrast between the official reaction to the crisis, which has been profoundly flawed, and the online reaction, which has entirely dominated the agenda.

The prime minister, Li Keqiang (pictured), visited the scene of the destruction on Sunday, August 16th. Government officials, he said, had to have a “strong sense of responsibility” towards people’s lives and must act “without withholding information”. Fine words. The trouble was that Mr Li was accompanied by Yang Dongliang, the head of the state administration of work safety, a national body. Mr Yang was in charge of the investigation team in Tianjin and had spent 16 years working in the Tianjin government before being promoted. But today, August 18th, he was in disgrace and placed under investigation by the government’s anti-corruption body. It was a huge embarrassment to the government’s efforts to clean up the city. And it was not the only one.

In the six days after the explosions, the Tianjin city government held a series of press conferences which were also an embarrassment. They provided little information about the nature and quantity of the dangerous chemicals kept in the industrial warehouse that exploded. The city official in charge of industrial safety and fire prevention, He Shushan, did not appear until the fifth day (apparently he was too busy fighting the fires). One week in and neither the highest ranking officials of the city and port have shown up at the press conference. Those who have appeared seemed ill informed and ill at ease. Moreover, the televised press conferences were cut off as soon as the question-and-answer session began. As a commentary in People's Daily said, such behaviour "fuels public distrust".

In contrast, China’s social media made all the running. Almost all the early pictures that spread around the world came from Chinese social media. Online chat rooms first drew attention to the safety failures revealed by the explosions. Local residents had no idea there were dangerous chemicals on site. The warehouse was barely 600 metres away from the nearest residential block, whereas the law says the minimum safe distance is 1km. When asked about the legally required distance at their press conference, the local officials did not know the answer.

Social media users also pointed out that the amount of sodium cyanide stored in the warehouse was many times greater than the company concerned was permitted to keep or had officially recorded. And as many accounts pointed out, no one knows how the company, Ruihai International Logistics, had got permission to handle these dangerous substances, nor how it managed to pass a local environmental audit in September 2014.

Social media offered the main platforms for residents demanding that the government buy the buildings that had been damaged and for those concerned about the fate of the dozens of firemen killed in the explosions. Both these matters led to demonstrations against the government over the weekend.

Social v state
The state media at first mentioned only so-called official firefighters—firemen who are part of the public-security bureau of the city government. But many of those who died were “contract firemen”: mostly young, inexperienced, ill-trained workers hired by the port, not the local government. As social media pointed out, many of the firemen who arrived before the explosions—and who were killed by them—were contract workers. And as they also said (and which Mr Li later repeated) all firemen deserved respect and gratitude, not just the official ones.

Lastly, it was social media and an independent magazine that raised questions about Ruihai's two owners, Shu Zheng and Li Liang. Mr Shu said he is holding shares on behalf of an unknown third party. According to Caijing, a magazine that has occasionally fallen foul of the censors, one possible owner is the son of a former head of public security in the port of Taijin. If true—and the link has not been confirmed—it would be an example of the close relationships between business and government that are common in China.

China’s communist rulers spend millions on a sophisticated operation to control and influence internet and online traffic. The aftermath of the Tianjin explosions shows that social media are nevertheless China’s main public square for debate and that government attempts to influence the narrative of the disaster have failed completely.