All is not what it seems within China's High Speed Rail development.

zoom said:

These stories don't relate to your comment i responded to. These are investigators taking their time to inform not the press and the bold type above is from again not the press as i understand it.Now ' i.e.' talks about the press being muted. I can agree that under political.corporate and legal pressure they can be gagged but that wasn't the essence of your original comment i don't think.I understood it to be accusing the western press of not speculating until all the facts are known which in my experience just does not happen anywhere in the world.

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I think the essence of my comment can be understood by comparing the articles on the Air France crash and the articles on the Chinese train crash.

One set of articles talks about "break-neck development speed" and corrupt politicians. The other set talks about waiting for the investigators to release their report before knowing what actually happened.

zoom said:

Now ' i.e.' talks about the press being muted. I can agree that under political.corporate and legal pressure they can be gagged but that wasn't the essence of your original comment i don't think.I understood it to be accusing the western press of not speculating until all the facts are known which in my experience just does not happen anywhere in the world.

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No,

The Western press are usually more "mature" about these accident investigation then you given them credit for.

the ones who covers these story usually understood that fan the flame don't help to improve and prevent these things, they think that bring pressure by being combatitive and generalize will help, which is not true in accidents like these... this an understanding that the chinese domestic press (or these celebs on these weibos) sorely lack.

in the case of these western journalist covering this accidents, mostly are "china" reporters not "accident" reporters, and the usually circumspect is not shown here, and very quickly it turns into a generalization fest that question the pace and foundation of china's progress.

this is not constructive at all, either for the accident, or the general understanding of this country.

Railway crashes also happen here in the UK. In fact, accidents per mile of railway tracks, there are probably more accidents in the UK than in China. And press does make accusations before sometimes even before emergency services arrive. But, usually people or press don't blame the government straight away, or blame the whole political system and country...

However, when China has a rail crash (kills 39 people), it suddenly becomes the best opportunity for some people in the west and its neighbouring countries to attack the capitalist one-party political system. I sometimes think the only way for China to gain any trust from anyone is to simply change the communist party name to something else.

kickars said:

However, when China has a rail crash (kills 39 people), it suddenly becomes the best opportunity for some people in the west and its neighbouring countries to attack the capitalist one-party political system. I sometimes think the only way for China to gain any trust from anyone is to simply change the communist party name to something else.

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not only west and neighboring countries, some people in china is also extremely rash and will blame anything on the "system", being complete irrationals. some even take into extreme and blame "china" itself.

change the name will not help.
as long as the government is ran by a statist entity.

I compare the state in china today closer in spirit to the enlightenment rule of the frederick the great of Prussia. a state for all its faults that sees itself as the primary propellent for china's progress. they think they are the only one who can prevent china sliding back into a chaotic failed 3rd world country chopped up into peices.
communist/capitalists, these are all means to achieve that end.

this is the essence of the entity that rules china today, and this essence is something some very ideological people are very much agains. not to mention the percieved direct conflict of interest with some of other asian powers vs a strong china.

i.e. said:

and while we are at it,

I am speculating that, one of the cause is that when couple of weeks ago when all the delays start to happening on the Shanghai-Beijiing Line, tremendous public pressure was put on Railways minstry to keep up the on-time performance, much of it drummed up by the press, thus the pressure trickled down to the operational level which bypassed some basic saftey firewalls.
the public, including press, also has a level of responsibility!.

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I was speculating about the same. Someone could have twit the rules a bit so as to quicken the recovery time at the expense of safety. No thanks to the bad press on the train delays from the local and foreign media. I still think though that the safety procedures and mechanisms built into the system should be immune to human decision error such as this, besides of system and equipment breakdowns.

Yes i.e. made a very good point there. Where are those people who were complaining about the delays now? out there complaining about public safety i guess.Regardless of who or what was at fault,it should be near impossible for 2 trains on the same track to collide in this day and age.We have the technology but was it in place here or was it over- ridden? I hope the investigation will enlighten us.

zoom said:

Yes i.e. made a very good point there. Where are those people who were complaining about the delays now? out there complaining about public safety i guess.Regardless of who or what was at fault,it should be near impossible for 2 trains on the same track to collide in this day and age.We have the technology but was it in place here or was it over- ridden? I hope the investigation will enlighten us.

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To be honest, the blame culture we have in China is very omnipresent, not just in the Mainland, but in HK, Taiwan, and Singapore. I made an offhand reference about everything in China being political earlier, but I sometimes wonder if it has more to do with values than the system. I remember having my flight back to the states delayed in 2007 because of summer storms, and all these Chinese people (who live in the US and were flying back) started crowding around and arguing with the guy at the front desk, who was completely powerless in that situation. I tried to intervene a bit, and my old man pulled me back out of fear that the situation would turn to fisticuffs. It's not like the front desk had any control of air traffic control or could change the weather. When the guy called his bosses he was given the reason for the delay and an estimated time, and when the estimated time passed the crowd got even rowdier, practically beating up (verbally) the front desk guy in effigy. Some people cancelled their ticket in protest, but they still ended up flying the next day anyways.

People's automatic assumptions were that the airline was directly responsible for the flight delay and it was a matter of bad planning and maintenance rather than bad weather and safety concerns. It feels at least that their is a very strong sense of suspicion and blame that borders irrationality whenever things go wrong in Chinese culture, especially when it comes to these public affairs. We see it reflected in the success of yellow journalism in HK and Taiwan, and one wonders if this may not just be a problem of China's statist political structure, but its state of development.

To clarify, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. As in many examples this tendency to blame can be interpreted as practices of accountability, and has served such a purpose in many instances. It's not like some people in that personal experience of mine didn't have a right to be frustrated either. Many had schedules that were displaced because of the delay. However, there is a degree of haste and shoot from the hip quality to these types of things that can cloud the situation a bit.

solarz said:

If this had happened in the West, the press would have waited for an investigation to conclude before making any accusations of negligence.

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Then you know nothing of the UK. The authorities would have asked people to await the result of an investigation, but the media would have been all over it and speculating as to the cause.

Reported directives from the Chinese "Ministry of Truth", via the

Central Propaganda Department: In regard to the Wenzhou high-speed train crash, all media outlets are to promptly report information released from the Ministry of Railways. No journalists should conduct independent interviews. All subsidiaries including newspaper, magazines and websites are to be well controlled. Do not link reports with articles regarding the development of high-speed trains. Do not conduct reflective reports.

Additional directives for all central media: The latest directives on reporting the Wenzhou high-speed train crash: 1. Release death toll only according to figures from authorities. 2. Do not report on a frequent basis. 3. More touching stories are to reported instead, i.e. blood donation, free taxi services, etc. 4. Do not investigate the causes of the accident; use information released from authorities as standard. 5. Do not reflect or comment.

Reminder on reporting matters: All reports regarding the Wenzhou high-speed train accident are to be titled “7.23 Yong-Wen line major transportation accident.” Reporting of the accident is to use “ ‘in the face of great tragedy, there’s great love’” as the major theme. Do not question. Do not elaborate. Do not associate. No re-posting on micro-blogs will be allowed! Related service information may be provided during news reporting. Music is to be carefully selected!

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Mr T said:

Then you know nothing of the UK. The authorities would have asked people to await the result of an investigation, but the media would have been all over it and speculating as to the cause.

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Can you link to some articles that demonstrate this?

zoom said:

.Regardless of who or what was at fault,it should be near impossible for 2 trains on the same track to collide in this day and age..

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Germany and Japan had its share of train accidents,

thousands of aircraft is airborne at this very moment and carrying hundreds of thousands of people,.

with modern technology, airplane are near impossible to crash either but guess what airplane crash every year too.