CHINA HAS pulled the brakes on its flagship high-speed rail project, freezing approval of new railway schemes and halting some bullet train manufacturing after a crash last month that killed 40 people and dented public confidence in the government.
The government was accused of putting a desire to modernise and innovate ahead of safety, while critics say the system is too expensive and too dangerous.
The crash happened on July 23rd, when one bullet train was stopped after a lightning strike on a viaduct near the eastern city of Wenzhou and another high-speed train ploughed into it. The accident has been blamed on faulty signalling equipment.
“We will suspend for the time being the examination and approval of new railway construction projects,” the state council, or cabinet, said in a statement.
The rail ministry expressed its regrets. “We feel deep guilt and sorrow about the tragic losses of life and property in the accident,” rail minister Sheng Guangzu was quoted as saying on the Xinhua news agency, adding that the accident had exposed holes in safety and management of rail traffic, as well as the lack of experiences in handling emergencies.
Mr Sheng’s predecessor, Liu Zhijun, was sacked in February over graft charges, after he allegedly took more than 800 million yuan (€88 million) in kickbacks over several years on contracts linked to the high-speed network.
The level of public outrage in reaction to the crash was intense. It was so powerful that even China’s official media got in on the act.
The normally placid People’s Daily newspaper, which is effectively the Communist Party mouthpiece, wrote that the China did not need “blood-soaked GDP”.
A state-owned manufacturer said it would suspend production of its CRH380BL trains used on the Beijing-Shanghai line while it investigated equipment failures.
The decision to put the project on ice came after an executive meeting of China’s cabinet, presided over by prime minister Wen Jiabao.
The government would also thoroughly examine projects that had already been submitted for approval, it added.
The high-speed rail system is a prestige project for the Communist Party, designed to showcase China’s innovative abilities and technological prowess. Beijing insists that the project is still a runner.
The rail project was one of the largest recipients of the trillions of yuan made available by the Chinese government for pump priming projects after the economic crisis of 2008.
“China will unswervingly continue its development of high-speed railways,” the government said in a statement.
However, Beijing is scaling back plans that call for expanding the high-speed network to 13,000 kilometres of railway by the end of this year and 16,000 kilometres by 2020.
China launched the operation of its bullet trains in 2007. By the end of 2010, 8,358 kilometres of high-speed railways had been put into operation, ranking China first in the world in terms of length.
The rail operator is also slowing down the rail system.
Mr Sheng told Xinhua that trains with a designed maximum speed of 350km/h would run at 300km/h, those with designed maximum speed of 250km/h would run at 200km/h and trains designed to run at 200km/h would now run at 160km/h.