Welcome to “Current Affairs Scan”. I am Jin Ran.
Two days ago on July 23rd, six university students majoring in Mineral Processing Engineering from Northeastern University in China, under the organization of the school, traveled from Shenyang, Liaoning Province to the Ungutu Copper-Molybdenum Ore Dressing Plant of China Gold Group in Inner Mongolia for an internship. It’s about 700-800 kilometers away. No one expected that instead of a bright future before graduation, these students embarked on a path of no return. Northeastern University is one of China’s “985” key universities, and for students majoring in Mineral Processing Engineering, interning at an ore dressing plant is a perfect match. However, the most terrifying contemporary death event suddenly occurred.
When the six students and their teacher were invited to visit the flotation tank used for separating ores and waste rocks, the grating they stepped on unexpectedly couldn’t bear their weight and collapsed. All of them fell into the flotation tank below. As a result, all six students died, while one teacher was injured and rescued. The state-owned enterprise China Gold Group, which is of the vice-ministerial level, quickly announced that this shocking nationwide major accident was lightly classified as “drowning”. The article didn’t mention at all that the students fell into a corrosive ore slurry, or that the grating collapsed, leading many people to think it was just a normal drowning incident. A knowledgeable netizen revealed the extremely horrific details.
It was described that the flotation tank was filled with a chemical substance more dense than slurry, with a temperature reaching 60 degrees Celsius, and equipped with stirring devices. Therefore, the students who fell in couldn’t move, and even if they could swim, it was useless. Their skin and muscles would be rapidly corroded by the chemicals, causing extreme pain, and they would quickly sink.
A student majoring in Mineral Processing Engineering uploaded a photo he took of the flotation tank, stating in a post: “Last summer, I visited a ore dressing plant in Mongolia, and the scene of walking on the grating still vividly lingers in my mind. Every step I took on the grating made a clattering sound… I can’t imagine how desperate it would be to fall into this dark circular tank. The flotation tank in the photo he took was at least 3 meters high, with a radius of 2.5 meters, filled with slurry and chemical agents.
This incident quickly exploded on the internet, with more related information helping people understand the truth behind it. Reports revealed that experts who investigated the scene found that the grating that caused the students to fall to their deaths should have been made of high-quality steel, but due to cost control, inferior materials were used, resulting in severe corrosion and visible fractures. Some netizens discovered that after the accident, the public account of the Inner Mongolia Mining Department of China Gold Company secretly deleted an article titled “Further Improving Production Efficiency and Quality in the Flotation Workshop of Inner Mongolia Mining Department”, which explicitly stated the need to save costs and increase efficiency. In one part, it mentioned firmly establishing the concept of “less cost, more profit” in the flotation workshop, intensifying material cost control efforts and encouraging workers to recycle old materials. It also mentioned the need to standardize operations in the flotation workshop and ensure that safety management is in place, successfully completing the replacement of the grating on the second level platform.
Some netizens ridiculed: No wonder this article was deleted quickly. This state-owned enterprise actually prioritizes saving costs to increase profits. They talk about “recycling old materials, reducing costs and increasing efficiency”, which is just covering up one thing with another. This essentially reveals why the grating fell. After the accident, instead of suspending operations and organizing rectification, the company continued its operations, sparking public outrage. Some netizens said, “State-owned enterprises are tough; they won’t stop even if people die.”
A newspaper interviewed the cousin of one of the university students who died in this incident. She said that her cousin, Li Hua, from Chongqing, had just passed the entrance exam this year, hoping to pursue his dream while on an internship. Three years ago, on July 29, Li Hua’s mother posted on social media that her son was admitted to Northeastern University and she hoped he would pursue his dreams. She hoped he would continue on the path to a better future.
Media outlets published another story about Huang Sheng, a Northeastern University student who perished in the accident, titled: “The Tragic Tale of a Junior Student”. The story goes: Huang Sheng’s father received a call from a counselor at Northeastern University at 7:40 PM on the 23rd, informing him that Huang Sheng had “encountered an accident” and urging the family to rush to Inner Mongolia as soon as possible. However, the details of the incident were unclear. It wasn’t until after 10 PM that Huang Sheng’s cousin, Li Pingfeng, saw a news report stating that six students from Northeastern University had drowned in the flotation tank while learning about the flotation process at China Gold Group’s Inner Mongolia Mining Department. Huang Sheng’s family then learned that “he was gone”. Born in 2004 in a small mountain village in Dazhou, Sichuan, Huang Sheng excelled to gain admission to Northeastern University in 2022. Li Pingfeng shared that their family lived in a poor-quality house with no kitchen. In the summer of 2022, the family celebrated Huang Sheng’s acceptance to Northeastern University. As the only member of the family attending a 985 university, a celebration meal held was the way to commend his hard work. After going to college, Huang Sheng only returned home around Chinese New Year because the cost of traveling from Shenyang to Dazhou was too high. Last summer, he stayed at school to work and earn some money. Li Pingfeng’s last conversation with Huang Sheng was over a dozen days ago when he asked if he would come home for the summer. Huang Sheng mentioned that the school arranged for him to go to Inner Mongolia. Li Pingfeng never imagined that this promising child of the family would never return. When the government informed Huang Sheng’s family of his passing, they summarized his life in a brief sentence: single-parent household, rural family, impoverished family, overcoming educational challenges from a backward rural area to enter a 985 university.
On July 24th, the brother of a student who “drowned” in the Inner Mongolia accident said that the school only contacted the family in the evening after the accident happened at noon. His brother is now lying in a cold coffin, with purple ears and mouth, swollen body, and a substance resembling a chemical flowing out of his mouth, all stiff and cold. Just a day had passed, but the latest post of this victim’s family has turned out like this.
The entire upper section is blank, like a blank sheet of paper. At the very bottom, “Statement” is abruptly written, stating: “The relevant department has begun investigating the cause of the accident. As family members, we are deeply saddened, and we have arrived at the site of the accident, waiting for the investigation results. During the investigation phase, we are not accepting any private media interviews. A netizen commented: This is an inevitable result on that land. The delay in the accident is perfecting the steps of concealing the truth and pursuing accountability. No one is considering the damage to the families and loved ones of the deceased, and no one cares about the feelings and empathy of the common people. They are working diligently to manipulate issues: turning big things into small ones and trivializing them… The more thorough the concealment, the more praise is received; some even leverage the blood and lives of the deceased to advance their careers. This is what they call ‘maintaining stability’.
After this tragic accident, discussion about it on the Chinese internet surged by 300% within 24 hours, making “Northeastern University Mining Disaster” a hot topic. An online petition with thousands of signatures is calling for a thorough investigation of the truth and punishment for those responsible. International media have also begun to pay attention to this case, calling it a “new focus on China’s human rights issues”.
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