作者：张兴贵
近两年来，中国每逢重大安全事故，当局的处理逻辑发生根本性转变：不再满足于撤职、降级等行政惩戒，而是迅速启动刑事程序，将相关官员直接逮捕、起诉、投入牢房。这一变化远非简单的“法治进步”，而是典型的政治罪名。在高度强调政治忠诚与意识形态效忠的全能主义体制下，官员被要求对辖区内一切事务承担无限的“全面政治责任”。许多重大事故被赋予更强烈的政治责任色彩，解读为对“两个维护”的背离，最终以牢狱之灾作为终极惩罚。这一升级的根源，深刻嵌入当前中国经济下行、社会矛盾积累的结构性困境之中。
首先是经济下行的硬约束。增长放缓、企业利润微薄、就业压力山大，资本天然趋向压缩安全、环保等“非生产性”投入，事故概率系统性上升。企业主与地方官员在保就业、保增长的KPI重压下，默契地游走于监管红线。
其次是民间愤怒情绪的暗涌。收入预期下滑、阶层固化、青年失业、房地产余震等多重因素叠加，公众对“权贵”与“体制”的不满持续发酵。安全事故因直接涉及生命，成为最易引爆舆情的导火索。当局急需一个可见、可控的“泄愤口”：抓几个官员判重刑，既能迅速转移视线、平息众怒，又能展示“为民除害”的强硬姿态。这种“表演性司法”在网络放大镜下效果显著，成为低成本、高回报的维稳技术。
第三是体制内在逻辑的必然。全能主义要求党对社会实施全面控制，要求官员无限连带责任。过去还能用行政处分缓冲，如今在“刀刃向内”“自我革命”的高压下，缓冲空间被压缩。事故不再是技术或管理问题，而是政治站位问题。这种无限责任制本质上是忠诚测试器，也是恐惧放大器。
最直接、最尖锐的后果是官员集体“战战兢兢、普遍躺平”。在“一出事就坐牢”的达摩克利斯之剑下，理性人唯一的最优策略就是：不决策、不担责、不作为。层层加码、形式主义、推诿扯皮成为新常态；宁可让项目烂尾、让问题拖延，也不愿留下任何书面痕迹或决策记录。高素质、专业化人才加速逃离高风险实务岗位，官僚体系快速平庸化、老龄化。治理能力不是在进步，而是在悄然退化。
这一躺平浪潮直接反噬经济：营商环境恶化、政策落地扭曲、企业信心进一步崩溃，经济下行加剧。企业为求生存，安全投入继续压缩，隐患积累，事故频率和烈度反而上升。当局则只能以更严厉的刑事打击回应“失职渎职”，从而形成经典的恶性闭环：泄愤式重刑导致官员恐惧躺平， 进一步导致事故增多，形成更严厉问责。体制变得空前刚性与冷酷，官员从“父母官”异化为另一种“被管控对象”，与普通民众一同置于自上而下的高压网格之中。民众面对的是经济生存压力，官员面对的是牢狱政治风险。表面权力不对等，实质上都丧失了基本的安全感与确定性，官民在“恐惧”这一维度上实现了某种畸形“平等”。
这种模式并不陌生，传统王朝晚期常用“杀贪官”来平息民愤，却往往掩盖了土地兼并、财政崩溃等结构性矛盾，最终加速王朝更迭。短期内，这种治理或许能制造“强势”假象，压制部分舆情。但长期看，公众会逐渐发现，抓再多官员，事故根源（经济增长模式、监管体制、激励机制）并未解决。
真正的出路不在于更狠的刑罚，而在于能否重建容错机制、厘清政治责任与行政责任边界、让专业回归专业、让法治回归法治。否则，恶性循环只会继续深化，直至某一个临界点。历史最终由实践书写，它冷酷、客观，且从不缺席。
编辑：钟然 校对：冯仍 翻译：沈美花
The Escalation of Criminalization in Accountability for Safety Accidents in China
Author:Zhang Xinggui
Abstract: Accountability for major safety accidents in China is increasingly leaning toward criminalization and politicization. Officials face higher risks in performing their duties, their tendency to avoid responsibility is intensifying, and governance capacity as well as economic vitality are being affected. This may form a vicious cycle where harsh accountability and frequent accidents mutually reinforce each other.
In the past two years, whenever a major safety accident occurs in China, a fundamental shift has taken place in the authorities’ logic of handling it: they are no longer satisfied with administrative punishments such as dismissal and demotion, but instead swiftly initiate criminal procedures to directly arrest, prosecute, and throw the relevant officials into prison. This change is far from a simple “progress in the rule of law”; rather, it involves typical political charges. Under an omnipotent system that highly emphasizes political loyalty and ideological allegiance, officials are required to bear unlimited “comprehensive political responsibility” for all matters within their jurisdictions. Many major accidents are endowed with a stronger color of political responsibility and interpreted as a departure from the “Two Upholds,” with imprisonment ultimately serving as the final punishment. The root cause of this escalation is deeply embedded in the structural dilemma of China’s current economic downturn and the accumulation of social contradictions.
First is the hard constraint of the economic downturn. With slowing growth, meager corporate profits, and immense employment pressure, capital naturally tends to compress “non-productive” investments such as safety and environmental protection, leading to a systematic rise in the probability of accidents. Under the heavy pressure of KPIs to protect employment and ensure growth, business owners and local officials tacitly navigate along the regulatory red lines.
Secondly, there is an undercurrent of public anger. With multiple factors overlapping—such as declining income expectations, class solidification, youth unemployment, and the aftershocks of the real estate crisis—public dissatisfaction with the “elites” and the “system” continues to ferment. Because safety accidents directly involve human lives, they have become the fuses most likely to ignite public opinion. The authorities are in urgent need of a visible and controllable “outlet for public anger”: arresting a few officials and handing down severe sentences can quickly divert attention and appease public wrath, while also demonstrating a tough posture of “eliminating evils for the people.” Under the magnifying glass of the internet, this “performative justice” yields significant results, becoming a low-cost, high-return technique for maintaining social stability.
Thirdly, it is an inevitable outcome of the internal logic of the system. Omnipotence requires the Party to exercise comprehensive control over society and demands that officials bear unlimited joint and several liability. In the past, administrative sanctions could serve as a buffer; today, however, under the high pressure of “turning the blade inward” and “self-revolution,” the buffering space has been severely compressed. Accidents are no longer treated as technical or managerial problems, but as matters of political standing. This system of unlimited liability is, in essence, both a loyalty tester and a fear amplifier.
The most direct and sharpest consequence is that officials collectively become “trembling with fear and universally flat-lying (lying flat).” Under the Sword of Damocles where “any accident leads to prison,” the sole optimal strategy for a rational person is: no decision-making, no assumption of responsibility, and no action. Layer-by-layer amplification, formalism, and passing the buck have become the new normal. Officials would rather let projects become unfinished (lanwei) and let problems drag on than leave any written trails or decision records. High-quality and professional talents are accelerating their escape from high-risk practical positions, causing the bureaucratic system to rapidly become mediocre and aging. Governance capacity is not progressing; rather, it is quietly degenerating.
This wave of “lying flat” directly backfires on the economy: the business environment deteriorates, policy implementation is distorted, corporate confidence further collapses, and the economic downturn worsens. To survive, enterprises continue to compress their safety investments, hidden dangers accumulate, and the frequency and severity of accidents rise instead. The authorities, in turn, can only respond to “dereliction of duty” with harsher criminal crackdowns, thereby forming a classic vicious loop: anger-venting severe punishments lead to officials “lying flat” out of fear, which further leads to an increase in accidents, resulting in even harsher accountability. The system becomes unprecedentedly rigid and cold. Officials are alienated from being “parental local officials” (fumuzuan) into another type of “controlled object,” placed alongside ordinary people within a top-down, high-pressure grid system. Citizens face the pressure of economic survival, while officials face the political risk of imprisonment. Despite the superficial asymmetry of power, in reality, both sides have lost basic feelings of security and certainty. In the dimension of “fear,” officials and the public have achieved a somewhat distorted “equality.”
This model is not unfamiliar; late periods of traditional dynasties frequently used the “execution of corrupt officials” to appease public anger, which often concealed structural contradictions such as land annexation and financial collapse, ultimately accelerating dynastic changes. In the short term, this style of governance might create an illusion of “strength” and suppress certain public opinions.
In the long run, however, the public will gradually realize that no matter how many officials are arrested, the root causes of the accidents (the economic growth model, the regulatory system, and the incentive mechanisms) remain unresolved.
The real way out lies not in harsher punishments, but in whether a fault-tolerance mechanism can be rebuilt, whether the boundaries between political and administrative responsibilities can be clarified, and whether professionalism can return to professionalism and the rule of law back to the rule of law. Otherwise, the vicious cycle will only continue to deepen until a certain critical point is reached. History is ultimately written by practice; it is cold, objective, and never absent.
Editor: Zhong Ran
Proofreader: Feng Reng
Translator: Shen Meihua
