It has been two weeks since Beijing-Shanghai bullet trains start running with very high speed on China’s land. While, just when the high-speed railway is attracting attention from all over the world, three accidents within four days made it become an object of public denunciation.
An article on Financial Times reported one accident of China’s high speed railway with title of “China’s bullet train: dark & sweaty”on July 11.
China’s controversial new bullet train connection between the mega-cities of Beijing and Shanghai hit its first major speed bump on Sunday, just 10 days after the service opened to the public.
At least 19 high-speed trains heading south from Beijing were delayed on Sunday evening, some by more than two hours, after a power failure on one stretch of track caused by bad weather, rail authorities said.
One of the main attractions of high-speed trains is supposed to be their punctuality and the fact they are not as susceptible as airplanes to the weather-related delays that plague air travellers in China.
Many irate passengers on the new trains posted messages on their micro-blogs Sunday, recounting how the trains came to a complete halt and the lights and air-conditioning failed, leaving them sweltering in the dark in the summer heat.
A two-hour delay is a long time for a train ride that is supposed to take under five hours to travel 1,318km.
However, despite some very extreme reports from South Korea and Japan, China’s neighbors, carrying the meaning of rejoice from the accidents due to jealous, most reports are objective.
New York Times said "Complaints include the system’s high costs and pricey fares, the quality of construction and the allegation of self-dealing by a rail minister who was fired earlier this year on corruption grounds.
But often overlooked, amid all the controversy, are the very real economic benefits that the world’s most advanced fast rail system is bringing to China — and the competitive challenges it poses for the United States and Europe.
Just as building the interstate highway system a half-century ago made modern, national commerce more feasible in the United States, China’s ambitious rail rollout is helping integrate the economy of this sprawling, populous nation — though on a much faster construction timetable and at significantly higher travel speeds than anything envisioned by the Eisenhower administration."
According to the report on The Star, the recent unveiling of China’s latest bullet train, speeding between Beijing and Shanghai, is testament to Chinese ambition. When they want to do a thing, they do it.
What’s remarkable about this new Chinese rail line is how the government admitted its mistakes and learned from them. Instead of going pell-mell as they usually do — China’s Three Gorges dam is an example of a project that was too big and too damaging — they have taken note of the corruption and construction faults that plagued the scheme.
Let’s turn our huge landscape into an asset instead of something we look at with exhaustion. How do we fly over that, we ask ourselves.
Well, how about some short fast hops across this country in trains that shoot like bullets from a grand terminus in every city? China’s doing it. Why can’t we?
“4 days, 3 stops,” Chinese are more critical than foreign attentions
China's new Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Rail experienced its third malfunction in the past four days, resulting in delays of up to 2 hours and 40 minutes. The Beijing Morning Post reported that Chinese web users have now coined the term "4 days, 3 stops" as a shortened form of speaking about the problems currently facing the line.
Besides the great debate on China’s Internet and among Chinese Netizens, CCTV, China’s state-run TV station, also played an exploratory program to question the reasons why three accidents happened on Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway in the short four days.
In the program, Bai Yansong, the host and commentator, summed up six reasons that why the accidents of Bullet train can arouse so many attentions from all over the world.
First is about the accidents' frequency - "4 days, 3 stops"
Second is about the vague explanations from railway administration
Third is about the shorting services, especially the noticing service about the situation and pre-cautions.
Four is about the rough details. Whether it bullet train was in hurry for catching up the "big day" in China that many details, including some counter-measures, were not considered very well and in specific?
Five is about the sharp contrast between publicity and reality. For one thing which had been claiming with highest level of technology in high-profile, it will definitely trigger great debates when something bad happened.
Six is something he hopes to be strict in constructing the projects, such as the high-speed railway.
Although there are some problems, it is quite normal for China’s high-speed railway encounter these during its primary period of development. What China needs to do is learn the lesson and pay attention on the development. Then, the high-speed railway will reshape China in long-run!
