The deaths of six Chinese university students during a visit to an ore processing facility in Inner Mongolia, northern China, have fuelled a growing wave of frustration and anger over the authorities’ response to such incidents.
The students from Northeastern University fell into an industrial flotation cell on July 23, after the grid plate collapsed under them, the factory’s owner, Zhongjin Gold Corp, a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Gold Group, said in a stock filing on July 24. A teacher was also injured in the incident.
The cause of the incident remains unclear, and as of the time of publication, the list of victims has not yet been made public.
In a now-deleted report, state media The Paper, citing interviews with the victims’ relatives, said that one student was from Chongqing, southwestern China.
“He was the first college student in our village and was admitted to a 985 university,” the student’s cousin was quoted as saying. Project 985 refers to a group of the most prestigious universities in the nation.
The final message the cousin received, according to the report, was on June 27, when the student praised her for being “awesome” after hearing she had been admitted to a school. The state media report was no longer publicly accessible hours after it was published on July 24, though the article was still circulated on Chinese social media platforms.
Some Chinese took to social media to question the official accounts of the incident, which highlighted the authorities’ response rather than those who lost their loved ones.
State media Xinhua reported on July 23 that medical staff confirmed that the students, aged between 20 and 22, had drowned after “full rescue efforts.”
According to China’s state broadcaster CCTV, which interviewed the injured teacher, it took approximately 38 minutes for the company’s rescue team to arrive at the scene, and it took another hour before the first person was retrieved from the slurry-filled tank.
“That was not water, but slurry thicker than cement,” read a blog reposted by a state-affiliated news website Guancha. “That was not drowning, but being torn apart by the conspiracy of chemicals, mechanical impellers, and tons of ore powder.”
The company operating the facility has previously faced penalties for safety violations. In 2021, China Gold Inner Mongolia Mining was fined for failing to conduct emergency drills and maintain proper detection equipment, amassing a total of 27 safety hazards after inspections, according to CCTV, citing the local emergency management bureau.