29 die in Beijing hospital fire, 8-hour media blackout

北京醫院大火29死，媒體封鎖8小時

Critic comments 'standard of censorship has reached a new high'


TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A fire that broke out at a hospital in Beijing has killed 29 people, but posts about the blaze were censored from social media and state-run media did not report on the fire until eight hours later.

According to China's state-run news outlets, the Fire and Rescue Brigade of Fengtai District at 12:57 p.m. on Wednesday (April 18) received a report that a fire had broken out in the inpatient department of Changfeng Hospital, in Fengtai. Firefighters extinguished the blaze at around 1:33 p.m. and rescue efforts ended two hours later with 29 reported dead and the cause of the fire under investigation.

Although the fire broke out just before 1 p.m., Chinese state-run media such as the Beijing Daily and CCTV did not announce the fire had taken place until 9 p.m. on Wednesday. These initial reports were scant on information about the blaze.

Before media reported the fire, several short videos circulated on social media, showing black smoke billowing from the hospital building and people trying to escape by climbing out of the windows. However, the videos were quickly deleted and discussions about them were censored.

According to Chinese media outlet Dingduan Xinwen (頂端新聞, Top News), some family members of the patients did not learn of the fire until they saw the news later that night, nor did they receive notification about the inferno from the hospital.

Commenting on the censorship of social media, Eric Liu (劉力朋), an analyst at China Digital Times, posted a tweet saying: "The standard of censorship has reached a new high. In the past, it was only during the Two Sessions (National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference) and during the Spring Festival that reports were not allowed."

The last time a fire in China captured national attention was in late November when an apartment fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang, killed at least 10 people. It was reported the fire was not extinguished quickly because COVID measures hindered firefighting efforts.

In response to public outrage over the handling of the fire in Urumqi, officials tightened online censorship. "White Paper Protests" soon broke out in many major cities in China with people taking to the streets and holding sheets of paper to express their opposition to epidemic prevention measures and censorship.