This spring the Chinese blogosphere saw a huge uptick in a very interesting safety issue, (lack of) elevator safety. There were reports of cars falling and killing an elderly woman in Hubei, in Xian a woman stepped into an empty elevator shaft, from the 15th floor, when the doors erroneously opened. In Shenzhen a nurse was literally cut in half when she was exiting an elevator and it dropped while she was mid-stride. Why bring up such a disturbing topic? Because, I have had it up to my eyeballs with the lack of elevator safety in China.

For a year I have lived in building in the central part of Tianjin. The apartments there are decent enough and buying daily necessities very convenient. Unfortunately if you live there your neighbors tend to be ladies of the night, young guys who use stairwells as toilets (something I had the unfortunate chance to witness first hand), and a whole host of businesses whose clientele keep the lifts nice and packed. By far the most intolerable part of this little hell hole is the elevator situation.

The building was not designed with enough elevators to start with, even if the only people using them were residents. Add to this extra traffic of customers, and add to that the ridiculous state of disrepair the elevators are constantly in, and you have the recipe for a lip biting, count to ten before you explode, kind of situation. Every day, and I do not exaggerate at least one of the 4 elevators in each tower would go out of service for some period of time. I lived on the 33rd floor of said building and while the view was great overlooking the Wuda Dao area, taking the stairs was not really a viable option. So several times a day I abandoned all hope of personal space, (which after all par for the course here in China), and face certain death in an attempt to go about my daily routine. More than a few times in my year there has an elevator stopped, and even dropped with me and 20 of my 'closest' friends riding inside. My worst personal record for a drop was 2 floors, though I have heard accounts from other round eyes of dropping some 8 floors. It does not matter about your personal religious beliefs, in those few seconds of free fall, packed in a metal coffin with 20 strangers, you do look to the sky for a bit of help.

Now, one might assume that all this drama could be chalked up to neglect on the maintenance side, which is partially true, after all, an elevator is a machine that can be fixed, or better yet replaced, just like any other. But this is only half of the story. The craziest thing about the whole daily nuthouse scene was that repairmen were constantly working on the machines. Now, if you are new to the China game, the word ‘repairman' may conjure up the image of a professional in a uniform with some mechanical training, maybe an electrician, or other special tradesman. But this is China, and the grease monkeys climbing in these shafts were usually mere teenagers or early twenty-somethings, who did not seem to have a clue or care in the world whilst they banged the gears of broken lifts without mercy (in plain sight of this terrified Westerner). Surely the owners of said building could have sprung for a decent repair company, or better yet, called the manufacturer in to fix his own product. But we all know how much this is just wishful thinking. No, in a real "the bottom line is my only concern approach" approach, the people in charge of that building have certainly done a cost benefit analysis and discovered that the liability of paying for a few wrongful deaths at some point in the future is more beneficial to their bottom line than proper maintenance today. It really is business as usually, and while we all know this kind of thing runs rampant in the middle kingdom; it becomes more real and higher stake, when you are the one in the dropping elevator car.

Like many other buildings in Tianjin, my building however is not unique in suffering the scourge of grim reaper elevators. The deaths described above attracted a lot of criticism of Chinese regulators. According to statistics from the top quality bureau, there were 36 elevator accidents last year that claimed 28 lives. And you if you will buy that I have some ocean front property in Arizona that I would love to show you. Let's take a minute and ponder that number and just assume it is accurate. That total is just over the US number by one soul. One might initially see essentially the same number of deaths and say look how unsafe the US is too. But China has over 3 times the population as the US, do you really believe that the numbers have any possibility of being that close? Even if the proportion of US deaths held up in China, and it wouldn't, you should expect at least a death toll in the 90's.

The accuracy of the statistics in this case is really irrelevant though, because most of these reported deaths are preventable through proper maintenance. According to Xu Ronggen, secretary-general of Beijing Chamber of Elevator Commerce, "Regular maintenance costs about 10,000RMB, but some companies only charge a third of that, which is not enough for the cost of conscientious upkeep." Xu went on to say, "It couldn't be more important to have a stricter assessment of manufacturers and maintenance businesses in the elevator industry. Otherwise it won't be surprising if there are more fatal accidents." It's an interesting comment coming from someone who works in exactly that office, but I digress. The point is that again the average citizen is put in a dangerous, yet avoidable, situation simply because owners are greedy or lazy, and regulators and enforcement agencies are not doing their job.

The problem is not a lack of regulation; those are already in place on paper. In fact Chinese requirements on elevator safety require checks and adjustments every 15 days, and over 20 safety points are to be assessed. But if there really were all the inspections, wouldn't we expect a few less fatalities?

So what is the take away from a situation like this? Should people be outraged? Should we accept that old refrain "There are just too many people in China to…" Who knows? But all the money and geopolitical power in the world doesn't mean anything to the average citizen if they have to roll the dice on something as simple as stepping into the elevator. Is this just a ringing endorsement for the health benefits of taking the stairs, it could be if your ability to see the silver lining is even more powerful than your rose tinted glasses. One might look at a piece like this and think, it's not worth getting worked up over, things won't change. Well, if that attitude of resignation persists it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. We all know China has its challenges to consumer safety but just because the mode of speaking out is different here, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. A small comment coming from a billion becomes a statement pretty fast.