AFTER A NUMBER OF serious workplace accidents in recent months, the Ministry of Emergency Management, the Ministry of Public Security, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate have jointly issued a regulation aimed at strengthening the connection between administrative law enforcement and the judicial authorities to improve production safety. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

The importance of safe production cannot be overemphasized, and cracking down on all kinds of criminal activities in this area in accordance with the law is the key to ensuring work safety.

China has intensified the crackdown on production safety crimes in recent years, but violations still occur, including some large criminal cases, from time to time.

That the new regulation focuses on establishing and improving cooperation between administrative enforcement of the law and the criminal justice system is of particular importance, as the lack of coordination has undoubtedly been a factor in production safety crimes, which usually involve non-standardized operations or abuses of power.

The often vague clues to production safety crimes and the difficulties encountered in collecting evidence mean that to effectively combat such crimes, smooth coordination and greater cooperation among multiple State departments are desperately needed, which will also deter crimes related to production safety. Only after a seamless working mechanism between administrative law enforcement departments and the judicial authorities is set up can well-deserved punishments be extended to production safety-related crimes.

Fortunately, in the newly issued document, the four agencies make specific stipulations on how to cooperate on this issue, including giving a definition of suspected crimes, the handling of clues to crimes involving public servants, the sharing of information, and mutual notification of major cases.

Well targeted and highly operable, these stipulations can solve the previous defects in production safety enforcement and certainly contribute to the fight against production safety crimes.

The relevant departments should enhance their coordination and cooperation to build an effective long-term working mechanism to ensure that strikes against production safety crimes are more powerful and effective.