Shanghai's wrong way of learning a right lesson

The New Year's Eve stampede in Shanghai in which 36 people died and 49 were injured was heartbreaking not only because most of the victims were young, many in their 20s, but also because it happened in China's most modern metropolis.

The city authorities, especially the police department, should take the blame for poor crowd management and control, or inadequate preparation for the event. They had assigned only about 1,200 police officers to manage a crowd of about 300,000.

The Bund, or the waterfront along the Huangpu River where the stampede took place, was probably the most watched area on surveillance cameras in Shanghai on that fateful night, so it would be futile to cite lack of knowledge about the growing crowd there as an excuse.