China is on the train faster than disaster | Isabel Hilton

A train crash in the Zhejiang Province of China killed to at least 32 people and wounded 200 more. Photo: Aly Song/Reuters

China high-speed rail seemed to symbolize the unstoppable rise of the nation: from the first line was opened in 2007, which has built more than 6,000 kilometers of track and seemed ready to spread the magic in overseas markets, bidding aggressively against established international players. Yet this week, families were mourning the 39 dead and tending the 200 injured in the accident on Saturday, the episode latest and worst in the fiasco of high speed train. A project to show that China was prepared for leadership in advanced technologies, said collapses in death, anger and shame.

How went so badly wrong takes some dark lessons for China. It is a story of corruption and cut corner and responsibility passed around a bureaucracy opaque and untouchable. It is also a lesson in a habit of nationalist "Digest" foreign technology, as a railway official said, then change it, to claim the result as a Chinese invention.

The lines have been plagued setbacks; the track, according to foreign experts, is mediocre and is likely to crack. The Minister of railways has been sacked and is under investigation for corruption, and the costs have tripled. Bloggers say that the Government is committed to cover until a research.

These are not just coming home to roost the chickens. A series of scandals has deleted million from the price on the part of several Chinese firms. Revelations of accounting fraud in China have shattered the confidence of investors. Do with the railroad, this has raised questions: no more accountability and transparency, is really willing to take measures following, difficult to China? How a system that allows little objective analysis can be achieved each time that responsibility?

These are questions that interest both to the partners of China as do them to the Government. Corruption has destroyed confidence in China's prestige projects. Corruption also kills: killing children in Sichuan in 2008 when their school collapsed and migrant workers in Shanghai last year when his apartment building turned into a deadly Inferno; He killed the infants who received thousands of drivers in collapse of bridges and milk poisoned each year with vegetables irrigated with polluted water.

Corruption is an issue highlighted in the speech of President Hu Jintao for the Communist Party recently 90 birthday celebrations, as it has been in the speech of the leader almost all for decades. But still without touching the conditions that make this endemic corruption: the monopoly of power in the hands of an untouchable institution. The prosecution of persons, without however high-profile trials, it has not done anything to change that.

Economic rise of China 30 years has been impressive, but suspicion about basic data makes it virtually impossible to determine how sustainable. The speed of construction of the railway's boastful recalls the great leap forward in the late 1950s, when officials set goals absurd for the production of food, and duly reported met them. Some 30 million people died of starvation until his death. Leadership response to each of these disasters has been the same: Delete discussion, silence for the victims and paint himself as the solution, not the problem. Last week, when local witnesses protested that railroad officials had hastily buried damaged carriages, there was outrage but little surprise. China Digital Times reported that the central propaganda department instructed the media to "quickly must report any information is released by the Ministry of railways".

Unless systemic lessons are learned, there are more afraid. China is embarking on expansion fastest in the world of nuclear energy. The world should pray the industry in any way will be immune from the curse of cutting corner, secrecy and corruption - or possible implications are chilling.

View the original article here