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Monday 8 August 2011
Lessons from China’s deadly train accident
The deadly train collision near Wenzhou underlines the incongruous fact that despite China’s soaring economy, vestiges remain of the ultra-left ideology behind the Great Leap Forward campaign more than 50 years ago.
The deadly train collision near Wenzhou underlines the incongruous fact that despite China’s soaring economy, vestiges remain of the ultra-left ideology behind the Great Leap Forward campaign more than 50 years ago.
That campaign, from 1958 to 1961, was aimed at rapid industrialisation. The slogan was ‘more, better, faster and cheaper’ production, so China could overtake Britain in 15 years and be second only to the US.
Today, 50 years later, the Great Leap mindset is just beneath the surface. Take the high-speed train. Just like during the Great Leap Forward, the government continues to exhort people to make superhuman efforts.
An article on the front page of the official People’s Daily newspaper on Dec 14 is telling.
Under the headline ‘Pioneers of Our Day’, the report extolled Li Dongxiao as a hero who, though only a middle school graduate, had ‘created many firsts for China’s high-speed rail’. His biggest achievement was that he learned to drive high-speed trains in only 10 days, just before the 2008 Olympic Games. His German instructor told him it would take at least two or three months, but the government had ordered Mr Li and nine other drivers to learn in 10 days.
Mr Li and his colleagues compressed three days’ work into each day, sleeping only three hours. After mastering the skills in 10 days, they went on to train China’s first generation of high-speed rail drivers.
This spirit of being willing to defy all odds is admirable but, when applied to the modern age - where untold numbers of lives are at stake - is inappropriate, to put it mildly. Why was a training course of several months crammed into 10 days?
Evidently, those in charge were more concerned with making a good impression on foreigners than with safety. The goal was to inaugurate the Beijing-Tianjin high-speed rail line before the opening of the Olympic Games.
The Chinese government was reckless. Skimping on training, like skimping on construction materials, costs lives.
The government’s initial response to the collision, as always, was to clamp down. Law firms were warned not to represent relatives of survivors. The authorities offered the families of those who died increasingly greater amounts of money, on condition that they would go home quietly and no longer demand to know the cause of the collision.
The government’s top priority clearly was not to take care of the survivors and mourn the dead but to ensure ‘social stability’.
Its second priority was to clear the tracks so trains could resume running and China’s GDP could continue to grow. The economy, it was clear, is more important than human beings.
Inexplicably, the authorities compressed and buried the wreckage of the first car that barrelled into the train in front, triggering off rumours of a cover-up, before digging it up again. Scavengers were allowed to go through the wreckage and dig up pieces of the train to sell as scrap metal. Little attempt was made to recover possessions of the passengers so they could be returned to survivors or the families of those who died.
Propaganda authorities banned local reporters from investigating the cause of the accident and ordered media to use only reports from the official Xinhua news agency.
Reporters were told to focus on ‘touching stories’, such as people standing in line to donate blood, and not to conduct independent interviews, not to link the accident to the development of the country’s high-speed rail network, and not to engage in commentary and analysis.
One touching story was the rescue of a toddler after she was trapped for more than 20 hours underneath debris. But that rescue almost did not happen. The powers that be had ordered a halt to all rescue efforts on the assumption that there were no more survivors. In fact, an announcement was made that all bodies had been removed from the cars.
It was only because one courageous officer insisted on a final check before the train carriage was pulled from the bridge onto the ground 15 metres below that the girl was found. China should learn from this horrific accident, just as it should have learned from the Great Leap Forward. It should learn to value life and to respect the dead. It should learn to put people above train schedules. And it should learn not to lie and not to cover up.
The writer is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator. Follow him on Twitter: @FrankChing1
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Lessons from China’s deadly train accident
By FRANK CHING
05 August 2011
The deadly train collision near Wenzhou underlines the incongruous fact that despite China’s soaring economy, vestiges remain of the ultra-left ideology behind the Great Leap Forward campaign more than 50 years ago.
That campaign, from 1958 to 1961, was aimed at rapid industrialisation. The slogan was ‘more, better, faster and cheaper’ production, so China could overtake Britain in 15 years and be second only to the US.
Today, 50 years later, the Great Leap mindset is just beneath the surface. Take the high-speed train. Just like during the Great Leap Forward, the government continues to exhort people to make superhuman efforts.
An article on the front page of the official People’s Daily newspaper on Dec 14 is telling.
Under the headline ‘Pioneers of Our Day’, the report extolled Li Dongxiao as a hero who, though only a middle school graduate, had ‘created many firsts for China’s high-speed rail’. His biggest achievement was that he learned to drive high-speed trains in only 10 days, just before the 2008 Olympic Games. His German instructor told him it would take at least two or three months, but the government had ordered Mr Li and nine other drivers to learn in 10 days.
Mr Li and his colleagues compressed three days’ work into each day, sleeping only three hours. After mastering the skills in 10 days, they went on to train China’s first generation of high-speed rail drivers.
This spirit of being willing to defy all odds is admirable but, when applied to the modern age - where untold numbers of lives are at stake - is inappropriate, to put it mildly. Why was a training course of several months crammed into 10 days?
Evidently, those in charge were more concerned with making a good impression on foreigners than with safety. The goal was to inaugurate the Beijing-Tianjin high-speed rail line before the opening of the Olympic Games.
The Chinese government was reckless. Skimping on training, like skimping on construction materials, costs lives.
The government’s initial response to the collision, as always, was to clamp down. Law firms were warned not to represent relatives of survivors. The authorities offered the families of those who died increasingly greater amounts of money, on condition that they would go home quietly and no longer demand to know the cause of the collision.
The government’s top priority clearly was not to take care of the survivors and mourn the dead but to ensure ‘social stability’.
Its second priority was to clear the tracks so trains could resume running and China’s GDP could continue to grow. The economy, it was clear, is more important than human beings.
Inexplicably, the authorities compressed and buried the wreckage of the first car that barrelled into the train in front, triggering off rumours of a cover-up, before digging it up again. Scavengers were allowed to go through the wreckage and dig up pieces of the train to sell as scrap metal. Little attempt was made to recover possessions of the passengers so they could be returned to survivors or the families of those who died.
Propaganda authorities banned local reporters from investigating the cause of the accident and ordered media to use only reports from the official Xinhua news agency.
Reporters were told to focus on ‘touching stories’, such as people standing in line to donate blood, and not to conduct independent interviews, not to link the accident to the development of the country’s high-speed rail network, and not to engage in commentary and analysis.
One touching story was the rescue of a toddler after she was trapped for more than 20 hours underneath debris. But that rescue almost did not happen. The powers that be had ordered a halt to all rescue efforts on the assumption that there were no more survivors. In fact, an announcement was made that all bodies had been removed from the cars.
It was only because one courageous officer insisted on a final check before the train carriage was pulled from the bridge onto the ground 15 metres below that the girl was found. China should learn from this horrific accident, just as it should have learned from the Great Leap Forward. It should learn to value life and to respect the dead. It should learn to put people above train schedules. And it should learn not to lie and not to cover up.
The writer is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator. Follow him on Twitter: @FrankChing1
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