Blaming the bad weather instead of human haste

Illustration by Zhou Tao

Photo by Zhou Tao

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THERE is a seemingly inexhaustible stock of superlatives to describe today's China, and most are either laudatory or self-congratulatory.

A new addition, however, is one of few exceptions. Xinhua reported on Sunday that a newly built road in Xinping Yi-Dai Autonomous Prefecture in southwestern Yunnan Province caved in on June 27, a day after it opened to traffic on a trial basis. The road gave way under the weight of a passing vehicle, which lurched and then plunged off a cliff, killing two people on board and injuring another two.

The ill-fated road has since been dubbed "the road with the shortest life span in history."

Local authorities and engineering experts attributed the road's failure to the rainfall that "moistened the roadbed and blocked the drainage ditches underneath." As rainwater accumulated, the road became prone to subsidence. Hence, the official conclusion that the accident was merely the result of the weather and no human factors were involved.

Nonetheless, Xinhua contradicted this account by saying that the road was doomed to premature demise because corners probably were cut during its construction.

As demanded by Xinping officials, the final phase of construction was packed into 60 days of intense labor so that the road could be finished in time for an opening ceremony scheduled for June 30. That date marked the eligibility deadline for national subsidies on regional secondary highways and roads. Secondary roads are those with a designed speed range of between 60 kph and 80 kph.

Construction in Xinping picked up speed due in large part to official eagerness to secure the subsidies, after a state decree mandated scraping of road tolls that are usually collected to recoup building costs. Miss the deadline and Xinping would be left holding the bag for its road-building efforts.

The fact prompted Xinhua to speculate that the cave-in was not caused by bad weather; rather, because the road was jerry-built.

Weather is always the fig leaf officials reach for when plausible excuses for man-made debacles are exhausted, or need to be assiduously concealed. In Xinping's case, the damaged road was built in adverse geological conditions, which afforded exactly such a fig leaf. Had the weather been merciful, officials might well be boasting about how their pet project survived the encounter with nature's formidable force, and that man can and will conquer nature.

While the downpour as a fig leaf may have worked to some extent, it's harder to buy the force majeure theory when sophisticated high-speed rail technologies also fall easy victim to bad weather. Since its inception, operation of the vaunted Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail line has been marred by one delay after another.

Lack of preparedness

On Sunday, the G151 train bound for Shanghai from Beijing was halted by what the Ministry of Railways said was a thunderstorm that caused power outages. After power supply was restored, the train started moving again. Twenty minutes later, it stopped for a second time.

Passengers were stranded in the hot carriages while no food, water or a formal apology was offered. Throughout the ordeal the train attendants only called for "patience."

The train was left without lighting and air-conditioning for almost two hours, and passengers complained the carriages grew unbearably stuffy. The windows on one side of the train were opened to let in fresh air only after passengers' insistence, the Xinmin Evening News reported on Monday.

Since Sunday, the rail link has seen about 50 delays triggered by power failures in just three days. Popular complaints are overflowing about the railways authority's lack of preparedness for emergencies and unpersuasive explanation of why delays were so frequent. Many question why the impact of thunderstorms wasn't factored into the design of the trains' power system.

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