China admits school building failures

BEIJING — Government officials have acknowledged in the most definitive report since the devastating earthquake in Sichuan province in May that many school buildings across the country are poorly constructed and that 20 percent of primary schools in one southwestern province may be unsafe, according to a description of the report published by the state media Friday.

The Ministry of Education report is a rare government admission about substandard-school construction. The issue has been a sensitive one since May, when an earthquake in Sichuan province killed 88,000 people, many of them children crushed in the rubble of shoddily built schools.

The report called on the central government to quickly fund the reconstruction of vulnerable schools, especially those in rural areas and western parts of the country that are seismically unstable.

Speaking about the report, Lu Yongxiang, vice chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, said in an interview with the China News Service that Beijing would increase construction subsidies by 25 to 150 percent, depending on the region.

He added that 90 percent of these schools are in rural areas and the earthquake-prone west of the country. The China News Service report singled out Yunnan province, just south of Sichuan, as having some of the most structurally faulty schools. It said 20 percent of the province's primary schools and 11 percent of its middle schools were structurally unsound.

In Sichuan, many parents of students killed in May continue to press their demands for an investigation into the widespread school collapses.

Earlier this month, a group of parents whose children died at a primary school in Fuxin filed a lawsuit against government officials and a construction contractor. The suit, filed Dec. 1, asked for $1.1 million in damages and a public apology.

But last week a judge at the Intermediate People's Court in the city of Deyang rejected the lawsuit, saying the court was hamstrung by a government directive from on high. The parents said they would pursue the case to the nation's highest court.

At least 30 killed in separate incidents

BEIJING — A state news agency says an explosion today in central China's Henan province has left at least 13 people dead and five others injured, and an elevator accident at a construction site in the Hunan province killed at least 17 workers.

The official Xinhua news agency says the blast occurred around 1 a.m. today in Donggancheng village in northeast Henan. An initial investigation has shown that explosives intended for civilian use had gone off, Xinhua says, citing the provincial work-safety-supervision administration.

In the second incident, the news agency reported that an elevator suddenly dropped to the ground at 7:30 a.m. today at the construction site for a real-estate project called "Shanghai City" in the provincial capital of Changsha.