There was an eerie calmness following the revelations about the poisoning of the Songhua River, a major water resource in northeast China.

Then the nightmarish news broke from Qitaihe, also in that part of the country, of the death of at least 169 coal miners in an explosion on November 27.

The toxic spill in the Songhua River, caused by serial blasts in a chemical plant upstream on November 13, caused the city of Harbin, a city of 4 million, to suspend its water supply for four days and is still threatening Russia, China's neighbour further downstream.

While in Qitaihe, where a major investigation is just beginning, central government inspectors have already reported they have been given different versions of the number of miners at work by the management when the accident took place.

Both catastrophes have dealt heavy blows to the two-year-old central government business revitalization drive in northeast China, and to the nation's confidence in its rusty industrial machinery from the era of the planned economy half a century ago.

They reveal an even larger-scale disaster. It is not that the factories are too old, that people are too poor, or that rebuilding the economy requires more money than anticipated. It is failure in management.

On almost a daily basis, Chinese press columns like to talk about the dichotomy between the rich and the poor, especially that between the relatively more industrial coastal cities and the rest of the country, as if this is the most daunting challenge facing China today. But they have not paid enough attention to another dichotomy, that between good management and bad management.

For the last two years, the central government has kept shaping policies and allocating funds for the northeastern provinces for them to speed up development in material wealth.

But the problem of poverty is not just a money issue, and cannot in any significant way be alleviated by lavishing financial support, as can be seen so vividly from the two recent northeastern tragedies.

If managers of local companies could not enforce due operation standards, and as in the case of Qitaihe, did not know about the central government's emergency instructions on mining safety and could not even tell how many workers were dispatched at one time. And if, as in various cities along the Songhua River, public administrations did not want to report the truth at such a dangerous time and act to control its consequences, then the problem in the Northeast is surely not just slow development.

The lack of honest and effective management has the potential to suck up billions of yuan in public funds and still result in no significant change.

Development will be unsafe, whether in poor places or rich places, wherever the sense of responsible management is eroded, or even worse, the norm of management is reduced to just not raising alarm, not losing face, and not taking action to protect lives.

The Chinese press columnists may also take note of the events in the Northeast and learn that by focusing on the income dichotomy alone they may actually lead readers to forget more important things, most importantly who is managing their money, and who is protecting their lives. How can the talk about quality of life have any substance without having a basic quality of management and governance?

It may also be of help to remember what Peter Drucker, the management scholar who recently died, once said, that there is no such thing as an under-developed economy, only on under-managed economy. And we really don't need to collect further evidence that under-management is an important reason why the northeastern economy has kept gathering rust.

Officials and managers of the Northeast must avoid letting the nation down. So after cleaning up the river, paying due compensation to the miners' families, and bringing those legally responsible to trial, what they have to do is to strengthen the management of their teams, including themselves. Only in this way can they help rebuild confidence in the region's business partners and investors.

The nation cannot afford to forget the lessons from the Northeast. The lawmakers of the National People's Congress, in their annual meeting scheduled for early March, may also find it necessary to develop more laws and ways to prevent similar management failures.

(China Daily December 5, 2005)