China demands answers after stampede in Shanghai

Chinese state media joined Shanghai residents in criticizing local officials and police on Friday for failing to prevent a New Year's Eve stampede that killed 36 people and dented the city's image as a modern, global financial hub.

Apart from Hong Kong, which is run as a special administrative region, Shanghai is China's most cosmopolitan city, a glitzy home to global companies with ambitions to become a world financial center by 2020.

State-run Xinhua news agency said Shanghai local authorities could not shake responsibility for what happened. It asked why there were apparently so few police on duty for the tens of thousands thronging Shanghai's famous waterfront, known as the Bund.

"It was a lack of vigilance from the government, a sloppiness," the news agency wrote.

Xinhua noted that the crush happened not far from a much-trumpeted new free trade zone described as the "pride of the country” and potentially set to rival Hong Kong as a regional finance hub.

The disaster "served as a wake-up call" that China "is still a developing country which has fragile social management," Xinhua said in an English-language commentary.

Shanghai residents echoed those complaints. 

"There was not enough policing and planning. It is really sad to see a stampede happen in a big city like Shanghai," said resident Tang Lifeng, 38.

The site of the stampede was cordoned off on Friday, with grieving relatives holding a candlelight memorial. Most victims were students in their 20s.

City officials said one Taiwanese national was among the dead. Of the 47 injured, 13 were in critical condition, they said.

The waterfront has become a New Year countdown site in recent years. Local authorities had canceled an annual laser show the week before the incident, citing problems controlling the record high crowd of 300,000 spectators in 2013 that blocked traffic and pedestrian thoroughfares, according to local English-language newspaper Shanghai Daily.

The report said a toned-down version of the event would be held instead but that it would not be open to the general public. Officials may not have expected such large numbers on the Bund after the light show was canceled.

Police have given few answers to questions on the city’s infrastructural and emergency planning, saying an investigation is ongoing. On Thursday, they did not allow foreign media into a briefing, underscoring concerns about negative coverage.

Shanghai officials have dismissed reports that a rush to pick up coupons thrown from a bar overlooking the Bund was the cause, with focus shifting to overcrowding on a raised viewing area.

Sales and giveaway events have resulted in deaths in the past. In one incident in 2007, three people were killed and 31 injured in a stampede for reduced-price cooking oil at a Carrefour in the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing.

Shanghai is known for a better-run municipal government than most other Chinese cities, with its leaders supposedly savvier in managing traffic and crowds. But the latest incident has exposed gaping vulnerabilities in the city's preparedness and emergency response system.

Authorities were still investigating the cause of the stampede late Wednesday night, but street vendors, residents, taxi drivers and other witnesses say the city failed to prepare for the massive turnout.

"On major holidays, the viewing platform [on the Bund] is always restricted — which is known to us all, but this time it was completely open," a riverfront resident, who declined to give his name for fear of reprisal, told The Associated Press.

Al Jazeera and wire services