26 November 2013
Last updated at 06:50 GMT
The explosions in Qingdao killed dozens of people
Media anger continues to grow over an oil pipeline leak in Qingdao in eastern Shandong Province on Friday that led to explosions that killed at least 55 people and injured many more.
Rescue teams are continuing to search for nine missing people.
Despite the detention of nine people in the wake of the incident, which was blamed on negligence and lax safety standards, The Beijing News accuses the Qingdao authorities and Sinopec of trying to shirk responsibility for the accident.
“The callous safety awareness of relevant government departments and enterprises exposed by the oil pipeline leak and explosion is shocking. A major oil leak was handled carelessly amid mutual wrangling between local governments and enterprises. People were not warned and they were kept in the dark,” it says.
The Southern Metropolis Daily and the Beijing Youth Daily say the explosion has sounded an alarm for haphazard urban planning in many cities.
Both papers call for authorities and state-run enterprises to take joint responsibility to ensure that underground oil and gas pipelines are built safely in cities.
The China Daily reports that uneasy residents are demanding compensation from the government and Sinopec for their damaged homes. They also want to be relocated for fear that another pipeline will explode.
Air defence zone
Turning to international news, Beijing’s Global Times lashes out again at Japan and the US for lodging further protests against China’s newly established East China Sea Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ).
On Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that the zone was “very dangerous” and it could invite an “unexpected occurrence”.
Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the zone would “unilaterally escalate” the situation and could even lead to an “unexpected situation”.
“We do not know whether this can be seen as the Japanese telling us that the East China Sea is no longer far from breaking out into war. If Japan really dares to get tough and flagrantly creates ‘unexpected events’ targeting aircraft that are carrying out missions in China’s air-defence identification zone, the Sino-Japanese confrontation can be entirely expected to escalate directly into friction or even conflict in the skies,” the Global Times says.
The newspaper adds that the Chinese military are ready for a ‘worst-case scenario’ of possible US intervention in a Sino-Japanese conflict.
Over in Hong Kong, former Tiananmen student leader Wu’er Kaixi failed for the fourth time to surrender himself to Chinese authorities on Monday, the Oriental Daily News and Apple Daily report.
Wu’er Kaixi, listed by Beijing as the second-most-wanted leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, was on a stopover in Hong Kong on a Taipei-Bangkok flight.
Back on the mainland, the Beijing Times, The Beijing News and other newspapers are welcoming the government’s first ever release of a legal document outlining a long list of rules to stamp out the pomp and privileges of Chinese bureaucrats.
The Guangzhou Daily says the new rules include a ban on cadres accepting gifts, hosting extravagant events, using official trips for secret holidays, using official cars for non-essential travel, or building ostentatious offices.
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