A fire at a two-story denim washing factory in Foshan, Guangdong Province, killed eight people and injured one on Sunday, according to China's state media. Firefighters reported the blaze at 3:12 p.m. at the Changxing Industrial Park in Jun'an Township, Shunde District, brought it under control by 3:45 p.m. and extinguished visible flames by 4:10 p.m., Shunde's emergency management department said.

The cause remains under investigation, Xinhua News Agency reported. China Central Television said 63 people at the site and surrounding areas were rescued or evacuated, and the flames did not spread beyond the site.

The Foshan deaths follow two separate September 20 incidents at garment factories in Ashulia, Bangladesh:

• A gas-cylinder explosion and fire at the compound of Pretty Composite Textile Limited killed at least nine workers and injured 35 others.
• A smaller fire at Fahami Group Industry triggered a stampede that killed one worker and injured more than 100.

The incidents come two months after a July fire at Fujian Huiteng Shoes in southeastern China killed 28 people. President Xi Jinping called for a swift investigation and for "those responsible" to be held accountable. Chinese authorities subsequently froze the company's bank accounts and detained the factory owner and several managers pending the safety probe.

What do the deaths mean for the International Accord?

All three tragedies occurred two weeks after a record 300 global brands and retailers signed the legally binding International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry, the successor to the Bangladesh Accord formed after the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse. The agreement's country-specific safety programs currently operate only in Bangladesh and Pakistan, under a core framework that renews automatically through 2029, with provisions to expand into other garment-producing countries.

Even in Bangladesh, the Accord covers just 1,760 factories — about one-third of the country's registered export-oriented garment facilities. Pretty Composite Textile Limited is among the covered sites. Officials said an unauthorized fleet of vans filled with CNG cylinders supplied gas for boiler operations, a setup that may have fallen outside ordinary factory inspections.

In a statement Wednesday, the International Accord Secretariat said preliminary post-incident observations by RMG Sustainability Council engineers indicated a spark from a nearby electric supply line could have been to blame.

"Ensuring that every worker has access to a safe working environment remains a shared priority and responsibility for the RSC and the Accord," it said. "We reaffirm our dedication to working with all relevant stakeholders and partners to build and maintain a culture of health and safety that prevents such tragedies within the RMG sector in Bangladesh."

Which factories fall outside inspection programs?

Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, the Washington, D.C.-based labor watchdog, said Fahami Industries was previously associated with an Accord signatory buyer, but that buyer appears to have stopped sourcing from the factory. As a result, Fahami Industries never underwent the Accord's inspection and remediation program.

Its exclusion points to a systemic gap: despite progress in Bangladesh and Pakistan, tens of thousands of facilities worldwide lack even basic safety coverage. Civil society groups, including Nova's, have also criticized how long it took the Accord to add boiler safety to its initial remit.

"The Accord is a safe zone in the industry because its obligations are binding on the brands and legally enforceable," Nova said. "The question is why brands and retailers don't expand the Accord across the globe and expand it to cover all safety hazards, including compressed gas."

Most of the global apparel supply chain remains unregulated and "grossly unsafe," Nova said.

For sourcing teams, the Foshan fire lands squarely in a tier — denim washing and finishing in Guangdong — that sits largely outside any binding safety regime. Buyers sourcing from China, and from non-covered Bangladeshi facilities like Fahami, now face a concrete decision: verify which of their suppliers fall under Accord inspection and remediation, and press for expanded hazard coverage, or accept that their compliance programs stop where the binding framework does.