Practical, effective and practical

outline：The Party Central Committee and the State Council have consistently attached great importance to work safety. Over the past year, General Secretary Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, and other central leaders have issued numerous important instructions and directives. In particular, the General Secretary has chaired three Politburo meetings to deliberate on work safety, and personally visited Qingdao, Shandong Province, to investigate the “11.22” incident...

 

The Party Central Committee and the State Council have consistently attached great importance to work safety. Over the past year, General Secretary Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, and other central leaders have issued numerous important instructions and directives. In particular, the General Secretary has chaired three Politburo meetings on work safety, personally visited the site of the “11·22” accident in Qingdao, Shandong Province, to provide guidance for emergency rescue operations, and delivered a significant address. He emphasized that development must never be pursued at the expense of human life—this is an inviolable red line. It is imperative to vigorously implement the strategy of safe development, treating it as an intrinsic requirement and crucial safeguard for scientific development, closely integrating it with transforming development models, adjusting the economic structure, and promoting overall development, so as to fundamentally raise the level of safe development. The General Secretary’s important expositions on work safety profoundly illuminate the relationship between safety and development, underscore the paramount importance of work safety, reflect the governing philosophy of putting the people’s interests first, and demonstrate the central leadership’s earnest expectations for effectively strengthening work safety and its firm resolve to advance safe development. These expositions serve as a powerful spiritual impetus and a robust ideological and theoretical tool for guiding work safety under the new circumstances.

The theme of the 2014 National Work Safety Month is “Strengthen Awareness of Red Lines and Promote Safe Development.” This theme was chosen to vigorously publicize the spirit of the General Secretary’s important speech throughout society, advocating the most resolute attitude and the strictest standards in upholding red-line boundaries, fulfilling responsibilities, emphasizing prevention, addressing root causes, and advancing safe development.

We must uphold the “red line” with the utmost resolve and unwavering commitment; the “red line” is, in essence, the “lifeline” and the “high-voltage line.” We must approach the “red line” with a profound sense of reverence and caution. All localities and departments must genuinely regard safety as the prerequisite, foundation, and safeguard for development. Economic development must never come at the cost of human lives; efforts to attract investment must never turn into “attracting injury and disaster”; and initiatives to increase output and expand capacity must never create hidden hazards. When economic and social development clashes with workplace safety or when such conflicts arise, we must clearly draw the “red line” for life and resolutely halt any practice that puts workers’ lives at risk. We must bear in mind that the core of the Scientific Outlook on Development is people-oriented governance, and that putting people first means putting their safety and well-being first. At all times and under all circumstances, safeguarding the lives and safety of the people must be given the highest priority, and we must consciously adhere to the red line that “development must never be achieved at the expense of human life.”

We must adopt the most effective measures to foster a robust public-opinion environment. The “Safety Production Month” should be integrated into the overall framework of publicity and education efforts, and social forces should be encouraged to participate in building a culture of safety. We should make full use of both traditional and emerging media to launch concentrated, unified-themed, and coordinated publicity campaigns that vigorously promote policies, laws and regulations, strategic decisions and deployments, major achievements, and best practices in safety production, thereby creating a synergistic effect and amplifying the strongest voice on safety production. We must urge all localities to strengthen accountability and promptly refine and improve the safety-production responsibility system featuring joint Party–government responsibility, dual responsibilities for each post, and concerted management by all relevant parties. We should also encourage enterprises to reinforce their primary responsibility by ensuring that safety investments, safety training, basic management, and emergency response are all fully implemented, addressing problems at the grassroots level and nipping hazards in the bud. Furthermore, we need to intensify cautionary education, using lessons from accidents to drive improvement: treat past accidents as if they were happening today, keeping the warning bell ringing continuously; regard others’ accidents as if they were one’s own, drawing firm lessons; treat minor incidents as if they were major ones, drawing broader conclusions from specific cases; and treat potential hazards as if they were actual accidents, leaving no room for complacency or侥幸. In this way, we can ensure that “when one plant experiences an accident, ten thousand plants receive education; when one region has a hazard, the entire nation is put on alert.”