On November 16, 2011, a

school bus A school bus is any type of bus owned, leased, contracted to, or operated by a school or school district. It is regularly used to transport students to and from school or school-related activities, but not including a charter bus or transit bus ...

run by a private kindergarten collided head-on with a coal truck in Zhengning County,

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...

, China. Nineteen children were killed, as were two adults.

Incident

The bus was originally a nine-seat van, but it had been modified to carry more passengers, and was severely overcrowded. 62 children were on board at the time of the crash, along with the two adults. It was involved in a head-on collision with a truck.

Aftermath

The school's owner, Li Jungang, was arrested on "suspicion of causing traffic casualties"; the parents of each child killed were to be awarded 436,000 yuan in compensation. The government immediately closed the school and opened a public one in its place, with a 45-seat bus donated by an oil company. The accident caused a great deal of outcry on the Chinese Internet, with many posters criticizing the small amount of money spent on education. Further criticism was leveled at the government when it was announced shortly after the crash that China would donate 23 school buses to North Macedonia. Many

microbloggers Microblogging is a form of social network that permits only short posts. They "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links",. Retrieved June 5, 2014 which may be the major reason for ...

questioned the propriety of donating decent vehicles to a foreign country while subjecting Chinese children to substandard conditions.

References

{{School bus crashes Gansu school bus crash Gansu school bus crash Gansu school bus crash History of Gansu November 2011 events in China