An explosion killed at least 65 people and injured more than 120 at a factory in China that makes wheels for US carmakers, including General Motors Co, state media said, as the country suffered its worst industrial accident in a year.
Chinese media outlets cited the government as saying that the blast in the wealthy eastern province of Jiangsu occurred at about 7:30am yesterday in Kunshan City, after an explosion ripped through a workshop that polishes wheel hubs.
An initial investigation suggested that the blast at Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products Co Ltd (昆山中榮金屬) was caused by negligence after a flame was lit in a dust-filled room, Xinhua news agency said.
Photo: EPA
Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products is a company run by Taiwanese Wu Chi-tao (吳基滔), who serves as the company’s chairman, according to a report by the Chinese-language United Evening News yesterday. The company, which has US$8.8 million in registered capital, has 450 workers in China, the report said.
Two officials from Kunshan Zhongrong have been held by authorities, Xinhua reported, citing an unnamed government source.
Images online and on television showed large plumes of black smoke billowing from a white low-rise building. Many of the injured, who appeared badly burnt and in scorched clothing, were shown laying on wooden pallets and being stretchered on to trucks, public buses and ambulances.
At the workshop where the blast occurred, television reports showed images of wrecked walls and heavy machinery that had been hurled through the window.
Beijing said online that Chinese State Councilor Wang Yong (王勇) was heading to the site at the request of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強).
Kunshan Zhongrong could not be reached for comment.
Television reports said that there were more than 200 workers at the site when the explosion struck, and 45 died immediately.
No Taiwanese nationals were reported dead in the explosion and the cause of the incident is still under investigation, Chinese media reports said.
The Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), Taiwan’s semi-official body for handling cross-strait exchanges, extended condolences later in the day.
SEF spokesman Ma Shaw-chang (馬紹章) said the foundation would do everything it could to help the firm.
He said that Wu was “very upset” about the incident, but has not yet asked for assistance from Taiwan.
The foundation said it has called its Chinese counterpart, the Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, to express sympathy.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS