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Concentration of power
By Shanghai Business Daily |
July 26, 2011, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IT'S not surprising for the spokesman of the Ministry of Railways to claim on Sunday that the train crash in Wenzhou on Saturday might have been the result of bad weather. Similar excuses abounded for other accidents just a few weeks ago.
Are China's high-speed trains really susceptible to lightning attacks as the railway authorities would have us believe? And if our trains cannot withstand even lightning, we must acknowledge that it's premature to put such high-speed trains into operation.
At any rate, lightning may have caused a train to pause, but it couldn't have caused two trains to collide as we saw in the tragedy in Wenzhou. The first train was said to have been be struck by lightning and then lost power - but it was stopped for 25 minutes - long enough for the railway's nearby control center to alert the next train and avert a collision on the same track.
The railway sector is the only one in China that is both a government department and a business entity. It remains a monopoly on grounds that a monopoly position would enable it to complete big projects efficiently. It's clear that this dominant position has allowed it to easily become corrupt. A series of high-ranking railway officials, including the former minister Liu Zhijun, have been rounded up for criminal investigation.
Concentration of power will only lead to more tragedies.
Are China's high-speed trains really susceptible to lightning attacks as the railway authorities would have us believe? And if our trains cannot withstand even lightning, we must acknowledge that it's premature to put such high-speed trains into operation.
At any rate, lightning may have caused a train to pause, but it couldn't have caused two trains to collide as we saw in the tragedy in Wenzhou. The first train was said to have been be struck by lightning and then lost power - but it was stopped for 25 minutes - long enough for the railway's nearby control center to alert the next train and avert a collision on the same track.
The railway sector is the only one in China that is both a government department and a business entity. It remains a monopoly on grounds that a monopoly position would enable it to complete big projects efficiently. It's clear that this dominant position has allowed it to easily become corrupt. A series of high-ranking railway officials, including the former minister Liu Zhijun, have been rounded up for criminal investigation.
Concentration of power will only lead to more tragedies.
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