Chinese coverage of train crash muzzled

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Relatives of the victims of China's train crash parade with a banner demanding the truth about the accident that killed 40 and injured 192 during a protest at Wenzhou South Railway Station on July 27.

By NBC’s Bo Gu
BEIJING – After a week of unusually outspoken outrage among the Chinese public over a high-speed train crash, Chinese authorities imposed a news blackout on the subject over the weekend. 

For about a week the Chinese media enjoyed unprecedented freedom with reports on the deadly train crash in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou that killed 40 people and injured nearly 200.

Social media, especially the many Chinese equivalents of Twitter-like microblogs, buzzed with millions of messages questioning why the accident happened, whether or not rescue efforts had been botched and if the investigation was jeopardized by the train cars being buried shortly after the accident. Even state-run media ran reports critical of the powerful Railways Ministry and that questioned the government’s handling of the accident. 

But the brief flurry of “free speech” didn’t last long.

Late on Friday evening, the propaganda authorities imposed a media ban on the train crash, forcing newspapers nationwide to pull their pages of coverage at the last minute. Investigative reports and commentaries were no longer allowed to be published – only positive news or information released by the authorities.

As one tweeter @twccl wrote on his Chinese Twitter page, "for the last 20 years, it has proved to be a joke every time you think freedom of speech in the mainland has become more tolerated."

Angry journalists and editors complained about having their stories pulled from the front page and posted their ditched pages on microblogs instead. “They can be so shameless…One night, all the media, including newspapers, Internet, print, video, are ordered to delete, scrap, be muzzled,” Gao Xubo, founder of the ChinaRFL web site wrote on his microblog. “This is humiliating to Chinese history and to Chinese people. This is one of the most notorious nights in human civilization. We give condolence for ourselves.”

People in China weigh in on the government's response to the high-speed train crash that killed 40 and injured 192.

‘A nest of corruption’
The outrage over the train crash had made citizen-journalists out of relatives and friends of victims.

Yang Feng, a young man who lost five relatives, including his mother and his pregnant wife, gathered more than 160,000 followers on his Sina.com microblog in just a few days.

Yang spoke directly to Premier Wen Jiabao, and demanded a thorough investigation into why his relatives were not found until 30 hours after the crash.

People have been particularly outraged that the Railways Ministry, which is responsible for overseeing high-speed rail transportation, was also handling the investigation and compensation for victims and their families. Several critics called for the entire organization, which has controlled China’s railway system exclusively for decades, to be disbanded.

He Weifang, an outspoken law professor from Peking University and a long-time critic of the government, published an open letter appealing for the disbandment of the Railways Ministry. "It’s not humane to let the one who made mistakes investigate how he made the mistakes and how much responsibilities he should take," He wrote.

Liu Junning, a politics scholar at the China Culture Study Institute, wrote on his microblog that the Railways Ministry is "a nest of corruption that only focuses on political achievements instead of serving the people."

Relatives of victims were particularly incensed by the fact that the ministry demanded to see a cremation certificate before they could be compensated, even though it had insisted on burying one of the train cars involved in the accident just one day after the crash.

Chang Ping, a journalist who was fired just a few months ago for his frank columns criticizing the government, posted a furious message on his microblog that was later forwarded far and wide: "This is the logic of robbers. As long as someone is confirmed dead, their relatives should be compensated. What has it to do with the Railways Ministry, whether the victims are cremated or buried or put in a crystal casket? You already killed them, and you want to make sure they are burned to ashes? Are there any murderers in this world more professional than you?"

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China train crash due to signal gear design flaw: Xinhua (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) – A deadly train crash in eastern China on the weekend was caused by a "severe flaw" in the design of signaling equipment, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday, citing the Shanghai Railway Bureau.

A high-speed train rammed into another stalled train near the city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province late on Saturday, the report said, because a signal should have turned red after a lighting strike, but it was mistakenly still green, Xinhua said.

Xinhua cited Shanghai Railway Bureau head An Lusheng as saying that railway staff at the Wenzhou station did not respond correctly after the signaling system failed.

The signal equipment was designed by a research and design institute in Beijing, Xinhua said, but it did not disclose the full name of the institute. The equipment had been in operation since September 2009.

Premier Wen Jiabao has ordered an investigation into the crash and pledged the government would take "resolute" safety steps in its aftermath.

The crash killed 39 people, China's worst train accident since 2008.

Wen arrived in Wenzhou on Thursday morning to mourn the victims, express condolences to the relatives of the victims, and visit the scene of the accident.

Public anger has boiled up over the crash in online postings and in at least one organized protest.

On Wednesday, more than 100 relatives of passengers who were killed protested outside a railway station, angered by the lack of accountability over the incident, state media reported.

The Global Times, a tabloid owned by Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, said the protesters demanded direct talks with officials from the Railways Ministry.

"They claimed that the bullet trains were built with advanced technology. How could lightning paralyze them so easily?" the newspaper quoted Wang Hui, whose husband died in the accident, as saying.

"Help us and tell us what really happened," the paper quoted the protesters, who gathered outside the station near the accident site in Wenzhou in Zheijiang province, as saying.

The newspaper showed photographs on its website of dozens of people with some holding a banner that said: "Disclose the true reason behind the July 23 train crash and respect the dignity of victims."

Efforts by the propaganda department to bar Chinese media from questioning official accounts of the accident fueled the anger and suspicion, especially about the death toll and rescue efforts.

The Railway Ministry is still investigating the cause of the accident, and has ordered a two-month safety review of railway operations.

State media has said the lightning strike knocked out power which in turn knocked out an electronic safety system designed to alert conductors about stalled locomotives on the line.

(Reported by Sui-Lee Wee, Jim Bai, Ken Wills and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Deadly China train crash prompts outrage

By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

BEIJING--It's the kind of disaster that provokes deep sorrow, anger, and the shaking of heads.

Barely a month after China launched its much-vaunted Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail link, two so-called bullet trains collided near the eastern city of Wenzhou, south of Shanghai, killing dozens of people and injuring hundreds more.

The trains that crashed are technically not part of the high-speed rail network that China has been aggressively building out across the country, but they are said to be the first generation of high-speed technology adopted by the Chinese.

Philippe Lopez / AFP - Getty Images

Chen Shengqiao, who lost his 12-year-old daughter Chen Yijie in the train accident, is helped by relatives as he cries after identifying her body at a crematorium in the town of Shuangyu on July 25.

It’s still unclear what exactly happened, but most reports say lightning struck a train travelling from Hangzhou to Fuzhou.  The train lost power and stalled on the tracks.  A second train travelling in the same direction then hit the first train from behind, causing two cars from the first train and four cars from the second to derail.  Two of the cars fell off the bridge, leaving a third dangling in the air

Although many people were horrified by the tragedy and the dramatic pictures, anger quickly set in.

“We are all passengers”

Widespread dissatisfaction and complaints were already brewing online days after the launch of the new Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail link.  In at least three separate suspensions of service just after its opening, several new trains were delayed due to poor weather, leaving passengers stuck on trains for hours without air conditioning after the power was shut down.

Saturday’s collision only fuelled simmering anger.  Very soon after the crash, Chinese Internet users found a link to a 2007 interview quoting He Huawu, a chief engineer from the Railways Ministry, “Our high speed train will not collide, because of our safety design.”  Zhang Shuguang, another chief engineer who appeared in the same 2007 report, was just suspended this year as part of a corruption investigation.

“This is a big slap on your own face,” said one new comment on the article. 

“Thunder makes two trains collide.  A truck drives past a bridge, then the bridge collapses.  You get kidney stones by drinking milk.  None of us is exempted.  Today’s China is a train running in the thunderstorm, and we are not outsiders.  We are all passengers,” said one Chinese comment on Twitter.

Burying the train car that crashed into the first train triggered another wave of anger.  Michael Anti, a well-known blogger and news critic, said on his Twitter page, “I have never seen this.  Yesterday, the train was derailed, today the compartments are buried.  Every time there is a plane or train crash, the debris is usually collected and checked to find the cause.  Is the Ministry of Railways going nuts?”

His remarks were re-Tweeted many times over, with more people expressing shock and demanding to know why the car was buried.  In response, a Ministry spokesman, Wang Yongping, explained Monday morning that the crash site’s geography was the reason for the burial, that mud under the bridge made it difficult to retrieve the train car.

But Chinese netizens were angry, too, at the disrespect shown to the dead and injured.  “Can’t you just gather the passengers’ belongings and wait for their relatives to collect them instead of just burying them?  There may be clothes they bought together, pictures they took when they travelled together.  In the cell phones, there may be text messages they didn’t want to delete, video to record their lives, or even the last words they said before they died!” said another Internet user on Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter.

AP

A wrecked passenger carriage is lifted off the bridge on July 24.

The cost of speed

The crash also reinforced scepticism about recent Chinese claims that the country is producing the best rail technology.

Two days before Saturday’s crash, the state-run People’s Daily newspaper rebutted criticism of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail link crowing about its superior technology.

A Chinese Railways Ministry spokesman went even further, claiming his country’s high-speed rail technology was far better than that of Japan’s bullet trains or shinkansen.

In the aftermath of the crash, some Chinese reports suggested an about-face, pointedly saying the trains involved in the collision were not of original Chinese design but the result of joint ventures with Japanese and Canadian rail companies.

In Japan, where the shinkansen network has run for 47 years with a near-perfect safety record, local newspapers leapt into the fray.

“The fear that [the] Chinese high-speed rail system may be dangerous has become a reality,” said the Asahi Shimbun.  “The essential technology was not something they themselves had developed over many years, but instead collected from various countries which some pointed out was susceptible to causing troubles.”

While many Chinese reacted cynically—one person on Twitter swore never to fly on any Chinese-built planes—the rest of the world would be justified in worrying, too.

As our colleague, Ed Flanagan, has pointed out, this is the same country that has built a bridge that was just shipped off to Oakland to be used in an earthquake-prone region. 

With additional reporting from Arata Yamamoto in Tokyo.

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