"Chinese officials are intensifying efforts to establish responsibility for last week's explosions in Tianjin as the investigation homes in on a warehouse operator, while a top government official has also been placed under investigation. State news agency Xinhua said Tuesday that the user of the warehouse that exploded, Ruihai International Logistics Co., operated for months without the needed documentation to deal with such chemicals. Its prior such license to do so had expired last October, with the company only obtaining another license two months before the explosion, the agency said. The government's main anti-graft agency Tuesday also announced that the current head of the country's work safety agency, Yang Dongliang, was under investigation and suspected of serious violations of discipline, a Chinese euphemism for corruption. Mr. Yang had served as the deputy mayor of Tianjin for more than a decade until 2012. It was unclear whether the investigation was connected to last week's explosions, and the statement did not elaborate," The Wall Street Journal writes.

The New York Times reports, "Mainland Chinese stock markets unexpectedly slumped again on Tuesday, with the primary index for the Shanghai market plunging by 6.2 percent. The stock sell-off was the steepest since an 8.5 percent decline in Shanghai on July 27, which was the market's biggest daily drop in eight years. The sudden drop on Tuesday came just one week after China sent a jolt through global financial markets with a surprise devaluation of its currency, the renminbi, in an attempt to reinvigorate the country's exports. There was no obvious catalyst for the drop in stocks on Tuesday. But the state intervention in mainland Chinese stock and currency markets has raised concerns that China's slowing economy could be in worse shape than official data suggests."

"China said on Tuesday it is investigating the head of its work safety regulator who for years allowed companies to operate without a license for dangerous chemicals, days after blasts in a port warehouse storing such material killed 114 people. Yang Dongliang, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, is "currently undergoing investigation" for suspected violations of party discipline and the law, China's anti-graft watchdog said in a statement on its website. The agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, did not say that Yang's behavior was connected to the explosions in the port of Tianjin but the company that operated the chemical warehouse that blew up did not have a license to work with such dangerous materials for more than a year," Reuters reports.