More than 78 million confiscated illegal firecrackers were
destroyed yesterday in a crackdown on people cashing in on Beijing
lifting its 12-year ban on fireworks at
Spring Festival, the Chinese Lunar New Year.
The firecrackers, worth 2.6 million yuan (US$320,000), were
detonated by police in Daxing District, a southern suburb of the
capital. Ninety-five suspects have been taken into custody for
their alleged involvement in the illegal trade.
Beijingers will be permitted to let off firecrackers for the
first time in more than a decade to celebrate family reunions
during Spring Festival, which falls on January 29 this time
round.
According to city regulations, lighting firecrackers will be
allowed in central areas for the 15-day period from Spring Festival
itself to
Lantern Festival.
For security and environmental protection, hundreds of Chinese
cities had banned fireworks in urban areas since the 1980s.
But more than 100 of them, including Chengdu, Harbin and
Shanghai, have since eased the restrictions under pressure from
local people.
The Beijing Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, the
capital's only licensed fireworks distributor, has so far ordered
and transported more than 149,000 boxes of fireworks and
firecrackers for the coming Spring Festival, Beijing Daily
said yesterday.
Depots of more than 12,000 square meters have been allocated
with a capacity to store 250,000 boxes of firecrackers, it
said.
But the end of the ban has brought a rise in the illegal
transportation, storage and sales of firecrackers, said officials
in charge of fireworks management at Beijing Municipal Public
Security Bureau.
The inflow of illegal fireworks from surrounding provinces,
especially Hebei, has had a severe impact on the city's fireworks
administration, police officials said.
By last Friday, officers in the capital said they had dealt with
73 firework-related cases and penalized 104 people.
A four-day work safety overhaul was also launched in Beijing
yesterday to supervise the storage, transportation and sales of
firecrackers in the capital, officials said.
They said more local residents should be mobilized to lend a
hand in supervising the lighting of firecrackers during the
upcoming festival period.
In China, firecrackers are traditionally believed to drive away
demons, especially on Lunar New Year's Eve.
(China Daily December 23, 2005)
