China flood and oil spill response improves. Prevention? Not so much.

A string of disasters in China has highlighted the government's improved crisis response, but also the many challenges facing Beijing as it seeks to strike a balance between economic growth and protecting the environment.

A large China oil spill near Dalian was followed on Wednesday by 3,000 chemical barrels being swept swept into a major river network in Jilin Province by flooding. The same day, authorities in Nanjing were struggling with the aftermath of a chemical explosion that killed at least 10 and wounded hundreds more.

Officials and thousands of workers continue to pour into the northeast port city of Dalian to clean up what Greenpeace China has called the nation's worst-ever oil spill. And Southern China continued its battle to contain damage from massive flooding – a bridge in Henan Province crowded with flood-gawkers collapsed Saturday, killing at least 37.

'Sharp contrast' to the past

The government has moved faster in response to these disasters and allowed far more open reporting on them that in the past, at least in state-run media. The tendency of local officials to keep bad news from Beijing -- and for Beijing to downplay the scale of problems once it was notified – has been replaced by quick notification from the provinces. And China's State Administration of Work Safety now has a rolling ticker of the latest major industrial accidents on its website.

That's a sharp contrast with the situation just a decade ago, when officials were loathe to notify superiors of embarrassing mishaps and the spread of diseases like SARS and Beijing tried to cover up major problems with news blackouts.

But the crises are multiplying too. China has seen nearly double the number of environmental accidents in the first half of this year compared to last year, according to Bloomberg.

Crisis communication better

Just two hours after the Nanjing blast, the state-run Xinhua news service released a short statement on the accident, according to Taiwan's China-friendly Want Daily newspaper. The paper said local officials had quickly notified the Jiangsu Province government, who in turn notified Chinese premier Wen Jiabao.

Dali Yang, head of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing, said in a phone interview that Chinese regulations now require local officials to immediately notify the central government of any "major accident" – defined as one resulting in more than seven deaths, he said.

"Local officials face an enormous amount of pressure to try to deal with these accidents," said Yang. They have improved the speed and efficiency of disaster response, but are up against a "breakneck" pace of development and bureaucratic inertia, he said.

"The [2008 Sichuan] earthquake response was an indication of how China has improved in emergency response, and since then local officials have been drafting emergency response plans and practicing responses," said Yang. "But there are always limits to what you can do."

"Poor decisions in the past can accumulate and result in a very dangerous situation," he said, and "often things do not get attention until there is a crisis."

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