10 people die in Tianjin high-rise fire

Ten people died in an early morning high-rise building fire in Tianjin, city authorities said Friday.

Five suffered minor injuries and have been hospitalized, the Tianjin municipal government announced in a statement via Sina Weibo on Friday.

The fire broke out at 4:07 am on the 38th floor of an apartment building and was extinguished at 6:40 am, Tianjin’s fire department said.

The cause was unconfirmed, but was believed to have started in an area with interior decorating materials.

Suspects believed responsible for the fire are being held for further investigation, the statement said.

Local officials have been ordered to release information in a timely, honest way by Li Hongzhong, Tianjin’s Party chief.

Also on Friday, two separate fires erupted in eastern China. They included a warehouse blaze at a logistics park in Qingdao, Shandong Province. No casualties were reported as of press time.

Ten households also had to be evacuated when a fire broke out in a residential building in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.

Information about the fires and the response were updated on social media by local fire departments and media.

The release of information by local governments has come under public scrutiny in recent weeks after a deadly fire killed 19 in Beijing’s Daxing district amid allegations of child abuse at kindergartens nationwide.

“Some local governments in China intend to avoid releasing information that they deem damaging to the government’s image,” Zhuang Deshui, deputy director of Peking University’s Government Integrity-Building Research Center, told the Global Times on Friday.

The public has the right to be informed and any vague or confusing message will only undermine public trust in government and leave room for rumors, Zhuang warned.

Platforms for information release are diversifying, he noted. An increasing number of governments are deploying China mainland social media channels like Weibo and WeChat to release information and interact with the public.

Such channels empower government to better understand the public needs especially in more complicated or sensational cases, he said.