Shanghai stampede shows China still developing
Highlights
A New Year’s stampede on Shanghai’s historic waterfront killed at least 36 revellers and injured dozens more, mostly women, as police admitted fewer officers than previously were securing the area.
Shanghai: A New Year’s stampede on Shanghai’s historic waterfront killed at least 36 revellers and injured dozens more, mostly women, as police admitted fewer officers than previously were securing the area.
While some witnesses said partygoers had scrambled for fake money thrown from a building, others downplayed its likelihood as the cause and said huge crowds were to blame.
The disaster, centred on a wide stairway leading up to a riverfront promenade, happened shortly before midnight late on Wednesday as people packed the Bund area to usher in 2015.
Official news agency Xinhua said it was a “wake-up call that the world’s second-largest economy is still a developing country which has fragile social management”.
“There was a quiet, and then people on the stairs fell in a wave and people started to get trampled,” Sarah, a Singaporean national who watched from a rooftop terrace across the road, said.
People carried the dead and injured through a gap in the crowd as flashes from emergency vehicles and revellers’ light sticks lit up the night, mobile phone video footage viewed by AFP showed.
American Andrew Shainker, an English teacher, posted on Chinese messaging network WeChat: “I witnessed lifeless bodies being carried out of a crowd one by one and dumped on the street.
Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered an immediate investigation into the incident and called for proper treatment of the injured. Such incidents during celebrations should be prevented, he said in a message.
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