Trains running at above 200 Km per hour are classified as high-speed trains. For China, these trains are a matter of national pride and a symbol of China’s technological prowess. And these train systems are billed as a large export earner with demand coming from Turkey and Russia to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and South East Asia. Bloomberg reports there is probably little chance of China now winning a high-speed train order in the US including for a line proposed in California.

What caused the tragedy?

There is no official word as yet on China’s worst rail accident since 2008. Prima-facie, multiple factors that range from power failure to signal failure and human failure appear to have brought two high speed trains on the same elevated track.

Consider the sequence of events.

1. Lightning caused a power outage and this stopped abruptly the bullet train—D3115—going from Hangzhou city to Fuzhou.

2. An electronic system designed to alert other trains on the same line to stop or alter their course also lost power and failed to work.

3. A second bullet train—D301—rammed into the rear of D3115, sending six carriages off the elevated tracks. At least 39 people, including two foreigners were killed and another 192 were injured.

4. Immediately the media was asked by Beijing’s central propaganda department to play down the ‘story’ and not to ‘investigate the cause of the accident’ and reminded reporters that ‘the word from the authorities is all-prevailing’

The news, however, broke out on a microblog, spread like wildfire and caused online uproar with an opinion poll overwhelmingly (90 percent) saying that government ‘did not treat us as humans’. What angered the people was the recovery of a small boy 20 hours after the accident when bulldozers began to clear the line. There were public demonstrations at the railway station and hospitals, where the injured were admitted, against the apathy of the officials, according to a Hong Kong daily.

Officials woke up finally and held the first media briefing some 24 hours after the crash and vehemently denied there was any cover-up attempt. ‘How can we cover up an accident that the whole world already knew about’, asked Railway spokesman Wang Yongping. As to safety concerns, he declared: “Chinese technologies are advanced and we are still confident about that.”

In the face of mounting public anger, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited the accident site and ordered a “swift, open and transparent investigation.” Three officials in charge of the line were fired immediately. Axing low ranking officials is not new to China to placate the public but ‘it does not address the fundamental causes of the Wenzhou accident, which lie in the anarchic capitalist system that puts profit before lives’, as a socialist commentator says.

China is expanding its high-speed rail network at great speed. From just 649 kilometres of high-speed track in 2008, China today has over 8,300 kilometres—that is, half of the world’s total track and four times more than in Japan. The Hangzhou city – Fuzhou line where the accident occurred was opened in 2009. China plans to have 45,000 kilometres of track in another four years.

This expansion is a part of a huge stimulus package that Beijing had unveiled to avert recession after the 2008 global financial meltdown. The China railway system is not pink of health. It is sitting on a mountain of debt amounting to $270 billion. Nearly 70 percent of the rail construction was (and is) funded through bonds and loans. Interest repayments amounted to $27 billion last year. The debt is projected to rise to $600 billion by the end of the decade.

Safety concerns have always dogged the China high speed rail system. More over it is also plagued by corruption. Railway Minister Sheng Guangzu acknowledged in April that safety might have been compromised by corruption.

His predecessor, Liu Zhijun, who is still hailed as the architect of China’s high-speed railway programme, was dismissed on the charge of taking $125 million in kickbacks.

The maximum speed of the trains has been reduced to 300 km per hour from a high of 350km per hour ostensibly on safety considerations but Sheng Guangzu has projected the move as ‘a desire to make tickets cheaper’ and to attract more passengers. The minister may be right to some extent. There are occasions when not even 20 per cent capacity is occupied leading to cancellations of train services. There was one such cancellation on Jinan-Beijing section a couple of days before the country’s worst train disaster..

The Beijing National Railway Research & Design Institute of Signals and Communications Co. Ltd., has accepted blame for Wenzhou tragedy.

The Institute would “face up to shouldering responsibility, and accept any punishment that is due, and will strictly undertake pursuing culpability of those responsible”, Xinhua reported, citing an institute statement.

“Safety overrides all else, and high-speed rail safety is of even more overriding importance,” said the Institute.

Findings of the official probe into the crash are unlikely before September. Tentatively it is said the crash was due faulty signals technology and the failure to anticipate problems after lightning struck one of the trains.

“Whether there are problems with machinery and equipment, or administrative problems, or problems from the manufacturing, we will investigate them to the very bottom,” said Premier Wen. “If the investigation turns up hidden corruption, we will also deal with this according to the law and there will not be any soft-pedalling.”

Cover ups are not new to the Chinese Communist party. This was in full public view when deadly SARS epidemic hit the country in 2002 and 2003.