The collapse on Aug. 14 of the brand-new Tuojiiang bridge in Hunan province, China, is "A bloody lesson," the China Daily wrote in its lead commentary yesterday. At least 36 workers, who were just completing the bridge, are dead, and 22 more are missing.

Chinese President Hu Jintao yesterday called for "utmost rescue efforts," from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where he is attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.

Hu called for an immediate, full investigation, and said that measures must be taken to ensure lessons are learned from the accident so that similiar accidents shall not happen again," China Daily reported. This bridge collapse follows one in June, which killed nine people.

"The nation was rocked by the news," China Daily stated.

"Although summer often bears witness to natural disasters, such as floods and heat waves, no one can blame Mother Nature for this latest bridge collapse. While we wait for the official investigation to shed light on the cause of the incident, it seems possible that human factors might have loomed large behind the sorry scene. Given the techniques and building materials we use today are more advanced and safer, it is inexcusable that a brand-new bridge should collapse on top of those who built it. The public deserves a full account of the cause of the accident, and as there is now a safety accountability system for officials, it is necessary to ascertain where the responsibility lies."

These infrastructure disasters follow the horrific brick-kiln slave labor scandal which sent shock-waves through the entire Chinese population. After one kidnapped boy escaped to his family, police began investigating the brick kilns, and freed at least 500 kidnapped children and poor peasant workers, who were forced to work as starving slaves in the brick kilns of Henan and Shanxi Provinces. Pictures of the freed slaves were shown constantly in the national media for weeks, and President Hu and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao expressed their horror and demand for justice. Some 35,000 police were sent out to rescue the enslaved workers.

This greed economy is causing a big reaction in the Chinese population.

The China Youth Daily, known for exposing exploitation of the population, and Sina.com found that there is a lot of discontent with China's big income gap. Some 57% of the 8,000 polled called China's new rich "extravagant", "greedy" and "corrupt".

A recent report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that the richest 10% of Chinese families now own more than 40% of all private assets, while the poorest 10% share less than 2%, Xinhua reported Aug. 14.