THERE is a seemingly inexhaustible stock of superlatives to describe today's China, and most are either laudatory or self-congratulatory.

A new addition, however, is one of few exceptions. Xinhua reported on Sunday that a newly built road in Xinping Yi-Dai Autonomous Prefecture in southwestern Yunnan Province caved in on June 27, a day after it opened to traffic on a trial basis. The road gave way under the weight of a passing vehicle, which lurched and then plunged off a cliff, killing two people on board and injuring another two.

The ill-fated road has since been dubbed "the road with the shortest life span in history."

Local authorities and engineering experts attributed the road's failure to the rainfall that "moistened the roadbed and blocked the drainage ditches underneath." As rainwater accumulated, the road became prone to subsidence. Hence, the official conclusion that the accident was merely the result of the weather and no human factors were involved.

Nonetheless, Xinhua contradicted this account by saying that the road was doomed to premature demise because corners probably were cut during its construction.

As demanded by Xinping officials, the final phase of construction was packed into 60 days of intense labor so that the road could be finished in time for an opening ceremony scheduled for June 30. That date marked the eligibility deadline for national subsidies on regional secondary highways and roads. Secondary roads are those with a designed speed range of between 60 kph and 80 kph.

Construction in Xinping picked up speed due in large part to official eagerness to secure the subsidies, after a state decree mandated scraping of road tolls that are usually collected to recoup building costs. Miss the deadline and Xinping would be left holding the bag for its road-building efforts.

The fact prompted Xinhua to speculate that the cave-in was not caused by bad weather; rather, because the road was jerry-built.

Weather is always the fig leaf officials reach for when plausible excuses for man-made debacles are exhausted, or need to be assiduously concealed. In Xinping's case, the damaged road was built in adverse geological conditions, which afforded exactly such a fig leaf. Had the weather been merciful, officials might well be boasting about how their pet project survived the encounter with nature's formidable force, and that man can and will conquer nature.

While the downpour as a fig leaf may have worked to some extent, it's harder to buy the force majeure theory when sophisticated high-speed rail technologies also fall easy victim to bad weather. Since its inception, operation of the vaunted Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail line has been marred by one delay after another.

Lack of preparedness

On Sunday, the G151 train bound for Shanghai from Beijing was halted by what the Ministry of Railways said was a thunderstorm that caused power outages. After power supply was restored, the train started moving again. Twenty minutes later, it stopped for a second time.

Passengers were stranded in the hot carriages while no food, water or a formal apology was offered. Throughout the ordeal the train attendants only called for "patience."

The train was left without lighting and air-conditioning for almost two hours, and passengers complained the carriages grew unbearably stuffy. The windows on one side of the train were opened to let in fresh air only after passengers' insistence, the Xinmin Evening News reported on Monday.

Since Sunday, the rail link has seen about 50 delays triggered by power failures in just three days. Popular complaints are overflowing about the railways authority's lack of preparedness for emergencies and unpersuasive explanation of why delays were so frequent. Many question why the impact of thunderstorms wasn't factored into the design of the trains' power system.

It only made matters worse that there was no recourse such as seeking compensation for delays once passengers boarded the train. Again the weather was a scapegoat for official ineptness, but this time it worked even less effectively than when a downpour was blamed for a buckled road.

Perhaps hired to shill for the high-speed rail, a professor who recently rose to prominence with his encomiums to the "China model" lauded the gaotie (high-speed rail service) as an apotheosis of that particular "model," for it "blends foreign experience with homegrown technologies and advantages."

It is befuddling that anyone could rhapsodize about an "apotheosis" that forced millions to give up slow but affordable trains for expensive ones with no reliability to speak of, to say nothing of the quality service that railway bosses had promised.

After becoming resigned to bei gao tie, or being forced aboard gaotie, the public's anger was rekindled by recent delays and blackouts.

The urge to recoup the staggering 3 trillion yuan (US$439.9 billion) building cost of gaotie projects, similar to that manifested by Xinping chieftains, galvanized the railways authorities to relentlessly pull in passengers when they are unready for the accompanying problems.

Gaotie is indeed a product with typical Chinese characteristics - that is, its invention is made possible with the pooling of vast resources. Even the way its grave financial risks are being diffused -- or simply passed on to others - is unmistakably Chinese: passengers were strong-armed into "supporting" gaotie en masse without being asked whether they like it. Even if they did get asked, top-down policies that eliminated cheaper train services have left them with no other choice. In a word, no argument, no opposition. Just silent compliance. Annoying public opinion should never be allowed to derail gaotie.

Those observers unnerved by gaotie's whopping liability-asset ratio, at 57 percent - which the Ministry of Railways says is well within safety margins - need only look at China's snowballing local debts to know it is comparatively easier to bail out gaotie than some local governments.

It is reported recently that government-affiliated local financing vehicles have run up a debt to the tune of 10.7 trillion yuan. Beijing's tightening of its monetary policy has considerably heightened the bankruptcy risks of these institutions that borrow heavily from banks to fund an infrastructure boom.

This raises the fear that some localities will become insolvent and victimize banks with a huge pile of outstanding loans when their debt comes due. There are already causes for concern. Yunnan Province was recently accused of defaulting on over a hundred billion yuan worth of debt, though it quickly denied it has a cash flow problem.

Building boom or bust?

The province-wide zeal for public projects has driven it to build roads like mad. And irregularities contributing to the cave-in in Xinping are just a symptom of a systemic addiction to fixed-investment-led growth. Xinhua reported on Wednesday that 143 million yuan had been embezzled for construction of 116 secondary roads in Yunnan as of June 30, according to the latest audit findings.

Nationwide, officials have exercised little prudence in splurging taxpayers' money on the imperative of driving GDP growth, for which they are almost solely evaluated for merit. For some, building, demolishing and rebuilding is all they are good for and all they know about economic development.

Before vanity projects, the talk of seeking public input is all but an empty promise and hollow posturing. Indeed, the public is seldom taken seriously when programs concerning its vital interests are ostensibly open for discussion. The recent row over income tax reform is a graphic example.

Amid the clamor for the monthly income tax threshold to be raised above 3,000 yuan to mirror higher cost of living, the government stood firm on the amount, after initially feigning concern about popular grievances. Yet in a last-minute change, that threshold was lifted to 3,500 yuan, a sign that tax officials had yielded to public requests, albeit grudgingly.

The hand-wringing over just 500 yuan is a measure of official indifference to what the public demands most, whether it is income tax breaks, safe roads or trains that run slowly but without mysterious stoppages.