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China can no longer afford its breathtaking pace of development
By Fernando Bensuaski |
August 4, 2011, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A decade or so ago, I read in an American magazine called Fast Company that one should go "Faster and faster, until the thrill of the speed overcomes the fear of death." It is a truly insane but fascinating concept; and China is in love with it.
Faster is easy to understand: when we are kids we want to grow - and to grow faster. Universities want to climb up the rankings, faster. Companies want their stock price to go up ... faster. Race car drivers want to go around and around, faster. China wants its GDP to grow ... faster.
And so, buildings are constructed faster, consumers are encouraged to buy faster and railways are built faster.
China has suffered from a large number of disasters in the past three years: mines that cave in, bridges that collapse, trains that collide, and possibly the world's worse road accident ratio. Additionally, we have milk that kills; buildings that topple over; walls that give off noxious fumes; and appliances that need to be plugged in at the point of sale to demonstrate that they work.
All can be rationally traced to the epidemic need for faster GDP growth, faster wealth at all levels.
China has accomplished more, in a shorter period of time, than most - if not all - countries in history. People are not only better off than ever before; they are actually contented, based on my limited circle of acquaintances. They also believe that tomorrow will be better still. China should promote these facts and ignore the self-imposed need to grow faster.
By compressing growth, it is unavoidable that problems will creep up all over the place. And I fully understand the chain of events that go from the need to have social stability to the need for jobs to the need for economic growth.
Unfortunately, the already dangerous "faster and faster" mentality is put on overdrive by the need to be seen, be noticed, be admired, and be respected.
China needs desperately to be respected, to be looked up to, to be a member of one circle or another, to gain "a seat at the table." It put on two global shows - the Olympics and the Shanghai Expo - at a staggering cost simply to impress the rest of the world. The cost would cover high school tuition for 169 million peasants for four years. But the world came, the shows were flawless, and the world was impressed.
Much of this race for recognition and GDP building can be set aside as amusing or even didactic. However, when people's lives and the integrity of a public system (be it the railway or food processing) is at stake, it is time to pause and carry out an honest, transparent, forensic assessment of the issues.
John Gong, the unpaid apologist for the Ministry of Railways, is not even trying to put a spin on the miseries affecting China's rail system in his article on July 20 (Shanghai Daily). He is simply saying, "It is not that bad, people! Give the boys a little more time."
His statement that "initial evidence seems to point to human error" is uniquely misleading. In aviation accidents, "human error" is something performed by a pilot, not by designers, engineers, manufacturers and managers seeking to build more for less ... faster.
And, pray tell, whatever happened to the lightning strike? What happened to the failure or non-existence of redundant systems? What happened to the failure or non-existence of the system that would have prevented the second train from smashing into the first?
I accept that China's rail safety record is decent (whatever is meant by that word). I travel by train and I would take the train to Beijing today if I had to go there. It is not as safe as flying but it is more civilized and more convenient.
Gong's statement that "the public needs to manage its expectations of the high-speed railway" is strange. The public can only expect what the Ministry of Railways promises: faster and better indigenous technology. Rail travel is not something new; it started the industrial revolution more than 180 years ago. Trains that travel at high speed are not a new concept either: Japan, France and Germany have operated high-speed railway networks since 1964, 1981 and 1991, respectively.
Accidents do happen. However, the accumulation of accidents and problems affecting China's high-speed rail operations is the result of a combination of factors that can be avoided: engineering that needed to be done faster and thus lacked caution, lack or failure of systems redundancy, lack of realistic testing, and the absence of a sanity check on the "faster and faster" concept.
China is an adult; it needs not think and act as a child. It should care less what the United States or the European Union think and care more about the welfare of its people.
(The author is Managing Director, Goshawk Trading Strategies Limited)
Faster is easy to understand: when we are kids we want to grow - and to grow faster. Universities want to climb up the rankings, faster. Companies want their stock price to go up ... faster. Race car drivers want to go around and around, faster. China wants its GDP to grow ... faster.
And so, buildings are constructed faster, consumers are encouraged to buy faster and railways are built faster.
China has suffered from a large number of disasters in the past three years: mines that cave in, bridges that collapse, trains that collide, and possibly the world's worse road accident ratio. Additionally, we have milk that kills; buildings that topple over; walls that give off noxious fumes; and appliances that need to be plugged in at the point of sale to demonstrate that they work.
All can be rationally traced to the epidemic need for faster GDP growth, faster wealth at all levels.
China has accomplished more, in a shorter period of time, than most - if not all - countries in history. People are not only better off than ever before; they are actually contented, based on my limited circle of acquaintances. They also believe that tomorrow will be better still. China should promote these facts and ignore the self-imposed need to grow faster.
By compressing growth, it is unavoidable that problems will creep up all over the place. And I fully understand the chain of events that go from the need to have social stability to the need for jobs to the need for economic growth.
Unfortunately, the already dangerous "faster and faster" mentality is put on overdrive by the need to be seen, be noticed, be admired, and be respected.
China needs desperately to be respected, to be looked up to, to be a member of one circle or another, to gain "a seat at the table." It put on two global shows - the Olympics and the Shanghai Expo - at a staggering cost simply to impress the rest of the world. The cost would cover high school tuition for 169 million peasants for four years. But the world came, the shows were flawless, and the world was impressed.
Much of this race for recognition and GDP building can be set aside as amusing or even didactic. However, when people's lives and the integrity of a public system (be it the railway or food processing) is at stake, it is time to pause and carry out an honest, transparent, forensic assessment of the issues.
John Gong, the unpaid apologist for the Ministry of Railways, is not even trying to put a spin on the miseries affecting China's rail system in his article on July 20 (Shanghai Daily). He is simply saying, "It is not that bad, people! Give the boys a little more time."
His statement that "initial evidence seems to point to human error" is uniquely misleading. In aviation accidents, "human error" is something performed by a pilot, not by designers, engineers, manufacturers and managers seeking to build more for less ... faster.
And, pray tell, whatever happened to the lightning strike? What happened to the failure or non-existence of redundant systems? What happened to the failure or non-existence of the system that would have prevented the second train from smashing into the first?
I accept that China's rail safety record is decent (whatever is meant by that word). I travel by train and I would take the train to Beijing today if I had to go there. It is not as safe as flying but it is more civilized and more convenient.
Gong's statement that "the public needs to manage its expectations of the high-speed railway" is strange. The public can only expect what the Ministry of Railways promises: faster and better indigenous technology. Rail travel is not something new; it started the industrial revolution more than 180 years ago. Trains that travel at high speed are not a new concept either: Japan, France and Germany have operated high-speed railway networks since 1964, 1981 and 1991, respectively.
Accidents do happen. However, the accumulation of accidents and problems affecting China's high-speed rail operations is the result of a combination of factors that can be avoided: engineering that needed to be done faster and thus lacked caution, lack or failure of systems redundancy, lack of realistic testing, and the absence of a sanity check on the "faster and faster" concept.
China is an adult; it needs not think and act as a child. It should care less what the United States or the European Union think and care more about the welfare of its people.
(The author is Managing Director, Goshawk Trading Strategies Limited)
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