Escalator death in China: possible in US?

Depends on your definition of exact. See my other post upthread, in which I linked to a video of a guy elsewhere in China falling through the floor and getting his leg mangled so badly it had to be amputated. I guess he didn’t get completely drawn in and crushed to death, but in my book, this second incident makes it a non-freak accident. Something is fundamentally wrong with the design of that escalator.

They are two different failures. In fact two different types of escalators

In the OP link the woman and child step off the upper landing onto the decking. then the decking fails and she falls between the deck and upper landing and gets pulled in.
In this link the escalator keeps running even after the woman has gone out of sight. It finally stops on its own. Near the end you see people walkup to the escalators a man reach down under the handrail of the down escalator. He pushes the stop button. And the down escalator stops. Also this is an energy efficient escalator. when no one is ridding it, it keeps moving but it slows down. Then when the woman and child approach the lower landing it speeds up.

In your link it looks like the man put a cleaning brush (?) on the steps at the upper landing. He then steps on it while putting cleaning solution on it. A step catches the brush jamming it under the landing. The upper landing begins to move back, a safety trips the escalator off, at the same time the step bounces back and the upper landing comes apart. Notice in this link that the steps and hand rail stop with the failure.

Two different failures. both with a weak upper landing and deck. The guy stepping on a cleaning brush on the steps was looking for trouble. I would never do that I would be too afraid.