Wen Jiabao: Rail Ministry Must Tell the Truth

Premier Wen got to the scene of the bullet train accident. Wen held a press conference after visiting the hospitals and talking to survivors and their families. Wen said he had been on bed for 11 days because of an illness, which was the reason he did not come earlier.

When asked on the handling of the accident, Wen stated he called the Rail Minister immediately. We stressed he only said two words on the phone to the Minister, which were'save life' and not even one word beyond that. Wen said the Rail Ministry must tell the truth of the disaster.

People at the scene accused the officials did not assist passenger to leave the train after the accident. Further, they charged officials harshly called off the rescue operation within a few hours. It is wide spread that carriages were pushed down the 60 feet bridge with people inside. Later, many bodies and a couple of live persons were found in the pushed-down carriage, as well as on the ground nearby. TV reporting from the scene also showed heavy equipment were used to smash the 6 carriages on the ground, without checking whether there were still passengers inside. Later, many bodies were found whose heads and limbs were cut off by construction equipment.

TV programs from the scene also showed carriages were then decomposed into pieces and buried in big holes dug at the scene. Reporters questioned why they had to be smashed to pieces. The Rail Minister stated the action was to prevent advanced sensitive technology fell into wrong hands. The spokesperson of the Rail Ministry stated the action was to use the carriages to pave road.

The news conference was not allowed to be broadcasting on-air in mainland China. However, many reporters posted the questions and Wen's answers in real time on micro-blogs.

Reporters came with many questions. Specifically, they wanted to know which official called off the rescue hours after the disaster, and which official order the train to be smashed and buried hours after the accident took place. They also wanted to know the real death toll. Beijing still insisted on the number 35, while it is obvious the number should be between around two hundreds. Three carriages plunged 60 feet with full load of 80 passenger each according to ticketing. In addition, one entire carriage was wiped out during the collision. The carriage looked like a post card with floor and ceiling ironed together. Nobody would survive.

勒克儿:凌晨3点，刚写完博客，再发一条微博睡觉去鸟：小时候，奇迹是一个柔软的奶瓶，三聚氰氨在里面，良心在外面；长大了，奇迹是一座燃烧的礼堂，孩子在里面，领导在外面；再后来，奇迹是一辆着火的大巴，人在里面，救生锤在外面；现在，奇迹是一节血迹班驳的车厢，你在里面，铲车在外面。

While Wen took a break, more than 20 reporters at the scene shouted together to demand the Rail Ministry to answer questions directly, because unlike Wen who just got up from his sick bed, the Rail Ministry had answers to all questions. However, neither Wen nor the Rail Minister responded to the demand, but wrapped up the news conference and left.

Combing through each word said by Wen, reporters realized Wen only promised to investigate the accident itself, but did not even brush on the clear demand to investigate the handling after the accident by Vice Premier Mr. Zhang Dejiang, the top CCP official at the scene.

Mr. Zhang received a B.S. from North Korea.

Stunned but Not Surprised on Sack of Rail Minister

China's high speed rail system is more than impressive, to the extend that it almost like a miracle comes true overnight. It took less than 30 minutes to travel from Tianjin to Beijing, two cities 130 km apart. The great majority of China's high speed rail system are based on traditional wheeled technology, but it also includes first and only commercial meglev line in Shanghai which has been operating since 2004. A second longer distance meglev line is under construction. Anyone impressed by Nissan's Zoom commercial should watch the meglev train passing by: it zooms away in twice the speed without the zoom (sound).

In the past several years, and in the next several years to come, the annual spending on high speed rail system averages about $110B, far more than President Obama proposed to spend in the US in total. To give Liu some credits, the rail system was able to acquire and digest technology from all over the world in a short time, then compete against suppliers in France, Japan and Canada in the world market. In contract, China's auto industry has been cloning foreign cars for as long as people can remember (copying the Soviet in the 50s, German and Japanese in the 80s, and copying everyone including India since 90s), but still has not find its legs to stand on.

Not to say, people are stunned to hear the news of Liu being sacked. Liu had been busy inspecting operations all over the country because the Spring Festival migration rush (300 million people would travel twice in a period of 2 months, and they are traveling the same direction. There is an award winning documentary on this great migration: Last Train Home in case you are interested. It's subtitled and quite entertaining). A few hours earlier Liu was speaking on public TV, a few hours later, new Rail Minister moved in already.

The rational inference is that it's more of a public struggle that we still don't know the details. However, no one should be surprised if the government describe Liu as a corrupted criminal in the trail to come. The key of the communists' ruling in China, relies on illegally sharing treasure and resources. People in China often say that, and officials say this too, if all officials (we are talking roughly 10 million people here) were lined up and shot, some of them would have been wronged according to the Criminal Code; however, if half of them were shot, regardless how you picked them up, there would be some who escaped the law. The idea is that the communists rulers intentionally to encourage officials to break the law (otherwise, you will be kicked out of the political hierarchy), so that they will be loyal to the Party because only Party can protect them from being prosecuted. In other words, greed and fear of the 80 million Party members plus about the same amount of government officials is all that supports the regime at this time.