Chinese public questions transparency over delays in deadly accident reports

“Why did it take the authorities a full eight days to announce an accident that killed four people?” 

“Over 48 hours have passed since the car crash, and I’m still waiting for any official update.”

In late October, two incidents occurred in China: a sightseeing vehicle plunged into the sea in Qidong, Jiangsu, resulting in four deaths; and a car accident took place outside a primary school in Shiyan, Hubei, resulting in one dead and four seriously injured.

The local authorities in both areas released their first official reports on these incidents late at night, eight days and three days after the events respectively, sparking public outcry.

Since April this year, at least ten significant public safety incidents in China have had their first official reports issued two days after their occurrence. In some cases, the authorities only released reports more than ten days later — after media reports from other provinces that cited persons with knowledge of the matter as well as online leaks.

Yan Zhihua, a researcher at the Zijin Media Think Tank of Nanjing University, told Lianhe Zaobao that official reports have become “super media” in China, and “everyone pays attention to it”. 

He said, “Many incidents are unknown to the public until the reports are released.” Therefore, deciding whether and when to release a report has become a major dilemma for local authorities involved in such incidents.

In Qidong, the official report was released at 12.51am on 26 October, stating that a sightseeing vehicle in the local Yuantuojiao Scenic Resort had been overturned by strong winds and plunged into the water on 18 October, resulting in four deaths. The report expressed gratitude for public and media oversight, and urged the public “to refrain from believing or spreading rumours”.

This incident had already circulated online for several days before the official report was released. Hunan’s Xiaoxiang Morning Herald sought confirmation from several Qidong government departments, only to receive responses such as “unclear”, “unknown” and “wait for the report”.

Cao Lin, a professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology and a former senior official at a Chinese central media outlet, posted on his WeChat account that “a report issued in the dead of night, is a sure sign of something fishy”. He believes that Qidong’s decision to release the report in the wee hours was a case of “delayed reporting” and a “cover-up”, adding that “the intention to deceive is evident”.

Cao, who worked in the news industry for nearly 20 years, wrote, “It’s hard to understand how in an era with transparent information, advanced technology and multiple channels for reporting, such a significant event was reluctantly reported only after eight days under media pressure. There is a lack of respect for public knowledge.”

In such situations, reporting from other regions has filled some information gaps. This year, there have been several cases in China where delayed public safety incident reports were brought about by external media and public pressure.

On 22 October, four days after the Qidong incident, a car crashed into students near a primary school in Shiyan during dismissal time and caused a public uproar. The local police finally issued a report at around 2 am on 25 October, stating that a 48-year-old man had endangered public safety with dangerous methods, resulting in one death and multiple injuries. The man was detained as a perpetrator.

Shortly after, in Chengdu, Sichuan, an overloaded minivan rear-ended a heavy semi-trailer at around 4 am on 28 October, causing six deaths and five injuries, with most victims being elderly women that worked odd jobs. The Chengdu police released an official report only after media from Hubei and Chongqing disclosed the incident on 30 October.

In some places, incident reports were delayed even longer. The Shaoxing subway accident in Zhejiang in September, which killed three sanitation workers, and in May the car veering off a bridge in Dongguan, Guangdong, which resulted in five deaths, were only officially reported by local authorities after media from Henan and Shanghai covered them ten days later.

Previously, a car in Tengzhou, Shandong, crashed into a bus stop in early May, killing six people. Surveillance footage of the accident quickly went viral online, but authorities were slow to report it. This prompted former Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin to urge local authorities not to set a precedent of withholding information from the public about incidents, warning that “this could have a negative impact on information transparency and social governance rules”.

China has, in fact, established certain regulations and policies through laws such as those stipulated in the Emergency Response Law, the Regulations on Open Government Information, the National Emergency Response Plan, and the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Work of Open Government Affairs, which to some extent specify timelines for disclosing information about emergencies.

These regulatory documents require government departments to promptly release information on emergencies. For particularly serious or major incidents (causing more than ten deaths) or those with significant social impact, an initial press conference should generally be held within 24 hours. For government-related public opinion concerning particularly serious or major emergencies, authoritative information must be issued within five hours, while other government-related public opinion should be addressed within 48 hours.

A lawyer who has long followed social incidents in China and requested anonymity noted that, according to regulations, the official reporting deadline is “generally within 24 hours”. Under normal circumstances, exceeding this timeframe would constitute a breach of central regulations, but there is a grey area over “what counts as public opinion and what needs to be reported, as the rules are not very specific”.

A paper published this year by the Institute for Public Governance under Renmin University of China’s National Academy of Development and Strategy found that, among 42 sudden public incidents that sparked widespread discussion in China since 2020, 45% of official reports were issued more than 24 hours after the events occurred.

The aforementioned lawyer bluntly said that the underlying logic behind delayed reporting is still “cover-ups” and “minimise big problems, making small ones disappear”. He said, “If nothing is released, no one knows and no one investigates; the voices get suppressed, and those above remain unaware. They’re afraid it will affect all sorts of matters, such as promotions or bids for ‘civilised city’ awards.”

He added, “In fact, when we see one such case, there are very likely many more that have been neatly concealed.”

Nanjing University’s Yan, who has worked in public opinion research for many years, said that China currently has no clear requirements on reporting deadlines. “Previously, the regulations referred to holding press conferences, but reporting itself is rather flexible — it depends entirely on local governments’ awareness of how to handle public opinion,” he said.

He argued that China’s public departments have already developed a fairly comprehensive and timely mechanism for handling public opinion, but some local government leaders may lack sufficient public opinion literacy, “thinking that not reporting or delaying reporting might be better — and that’s where things sometimes get stuck”.

Yan said, “At times, when a local government is unwilling to report an incident, senior leaders will directly call the top local official and demand that information be released quickly. Why? Because not reporting is like trying to smother a fire with paper — it will eventually ignite all at once, with obvious consequences. So it is better to report early.”

Besides top-down accountability from higher authorities, Yan — who believes official reports have effectively become China’s “national newspaper” — noted that Chinese netizens tend to expect rapid disclosures, forming a bottom-up force pushing the country towards greater transparency. “Online public opinion is now pressuring China to become an actual democratic society,” he said.

Wu Lei, a former Chinese criminal defence lawyer now living in Japan, told Lianhe Zaobao that China faces industrial accidents, mass incidents and “even incidents the party and government dislike”. The categorisation of such events is highly complex, and there is no clear legal requirement on how quickly information must be released, as the criteria must take into account social stability needs. Yet other rules state that concerns should be addressed “in a timely manner”, which “seems to acknowledge that the government does, in fact, have this obligation”.

Wu thinks that official disclosures in China are not intended to address public concerns, but rather to “guide public opinion”.

He observed that official notices frequently use phrases such as “the internet is not beyond the reach of the law” and “do not spread rumours”, which clearly reveal the intention to maintain stability. He believes that social tensions in China have become “extremely acute”, and that in recent years the authorities have developed mature measures to maintain stability in dealing with social incidents, including controls over the media and the people involved.

Citing the example of last year’s car attack in Zhuhai, Guangdong, which left 35 dead and 43 injured, while the perpetrator was quickly arrested and executed, he asked, “What had happened to him? Why was he dissatisfied with society? What were the causes? How can we improve? We are not even given the chance to learn from it.”

Wu warned that high pressure stability maintenance may lead to a painful price in the transition. “If I were to offer any advice, it would be that at the very least our investigative journalists and media should be allowed to be more active.”

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “中国多起死伤事故消息姗姗来迟 官方通报成“全民报纸””.

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