Blacklists ban air, rail travel

China issued its first blacklists for violators of airline and railway safety rules on June 1 to promote social honesty, safeguard security and order, and discourage future troublemakers.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China issued the blacklist, which consists of 86 violators, and banned them from air travel for a year starting on June 1.

The list is based on the punishment issued by police around the country. On the blacklist, 64 of the violators were found to be carrying banned or dangerous substances, including replica firearms, knives, bullets and lighters.

Fifteen violators used fake IDs or impersonated others when boarding a plane, two disrupted flight order, two obstructed security checks and three smoked during flight.

Other offenses that could also lead violators to being banned include fabricating and purposefully spreading false information on airline safety status; forcing entry onto airplanes or runways or into cockpits; interfering with or assaulting airline staff or damaging airline property; and stealing property from other passengers, according to the administration.

The blacklist was first published on the administration's website on May 23 to give the violators a week to appeal. The administration said on June 1 that the blacklist took effect without any changes.

The air travel blacklist came exactly one year after a 36-year-old female PhD student from a prestigious university in Wuhan, Hubei province, angrily beat an airline clerk at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport.

Security footage of the incident went viral online. The student, identified by her alias Zhang Dan, said she was frustrated after missing her plane and later apologized for her actions. She was detained by police for 10 days on an assault charge.

Also on June 1, the Railway Customer Service Center of China issued its first blacklist consisting of 31 people who seriously violated China's railway regulations. They will be barred from buying train tickets for 180 days, and the ban was to start last week.

According to the list, 21 of the violators were punished for smoking on trains, traveling without tickets or failing to pay the ticket fee upon arrival. Ten of the violators were punished by police for reselling tickets, using false IDs for privileged seats or disrupting public order and railway safety, which resulted in a major negative social impact.

Zhang Xiulan, a professor of social development and public policy at Beijing Normal University, says the blacklists are necessary to uphold social morality, ethics and honesty.

zhangzhihao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 06/08/2018 page15)