By SCM Foreign Desk
BEIJING — A massive gas explosion at a coal mine in northern China’s Shanxi province has killed at least 90 people, state media reported on Saturday, marking the country’s worst industrial disaster in more than a decade.
The blast ripped through the Liushenyu coal mine in Qinyuan county, Changzhi city, at approximately 7:29 p.m. local time on Friday. A total of 247 miners were working underground when the explosion occurred.
According to the official state news agency, Xinhua, local authorities had been alerted shortly before the blast that an underground carbon monoxide sensor had triggered an alarm, signaling that toxic gas levels had severely “exceeded limits.”
A massive rescue operation was launched immediately, drawing between 400 and 750 emergency personnel, including specialized provincial rescue and medical teams. By Saturday morning, at least 201 workers had been successfully evacuated or pulled to the surface, many of whom were rushed to nearby hospitals.
Over 100 people remain hospitalized, with at least 16 reported to be in critical condition. As of Saturday afternoon, rescue crews were still searching intensively for nine miners who remain missing.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an “all-out rescue” and urged authorities to spare no effort in treating the injured. In a stern directive, Xi ordered a thorough investigation into the cause of the disaster, demanding that “accountability be pursued in accordance with the law.”
Premier Li Qiang also called for a transparent and timely release of information regarding the incident. State broadcaster CCTV reported Saturday that company executives from Shanxi Tongzhou Group Liushenyu Coal Industry, the operator of the facility, have already been detained by law enforcement as the investigation gets underway.
When contacted by international media, phone operators at the firm’s headquarters declined to comment. The tragedy highlights the persistent dangers in China’s mining sector, even as the government has claimed major safety improvements over the past twenty years.
This incident marks the deadliest Chinese mining disaster since 2009, when a coal and gas outburst in northeast Heilongjiang province claimed 108 lives.
To provide global readers with the necessary context, the following background elements detail the state of China’s coal dependencies and safety record.
In the early 2000s, China’s coal mining industry was widely considered the deadliest in the world, averaging thousands of fatalities per year due to frequent gas explosions, flooding, and structural collapses.
A major government push over the last two decades forced the consolidation of the industry—closing thousands of small, illegal, or poorly equipped private mines and handing control to heavily regulated state-backed conglomerates.
While these measures successfully plummeted the annual death toll, major safety gaps remain. Prior to Friday’s blast, a high-profile open-pit mine collapse in Inner Mongolia killed 53 workers in 2023. Notably, the Liushenyu Coal Mine involved in Friday’s disaster had been officially cited in 2024 by the National Mine Safety Administration as one of 1,128 facilities possessing “severe safety hazards.”
Shanxi province is the undisputed coal capital of China. It accounts for over a quarter of the nation’s total coal output, extracting more than one billion metric tons annually. Because of the sheer volume of extraction and the depth of the underground shafts required to reach deeper seams, the region is highly susceptible to pockets of trapped methane and carbon monoxide gas—the primary triggers for catastrophic underground explosions.
This disaster highlights a complex paradox in China’s current economic and environmental strategy:
The Green Push: China is the world’s undisputed leader in renewable energy expansion, building solar and wind capacity at a speed outstripping the rest of the world combined.
The Coal Reality: Despite this green boom, coal remains the absolute bedrock of China’s energy security, accounting for over half of its domestic energy consumption. Amid recent global energy volatility,
Beijing has repeatedly ordered coal mines to maximize production capacity to prevent blackouts and sustain factory output, a pressure that critics argue can lead local operators to cut safety corners.
