CHINA LIES

China censors find hiding rail crash difficult

In a tightly controlled dictatorship, the people hear only what the government chooses to tell them.

As the Chinese become more well-off, technically sophisticated and curious about the sometimes inscrutable ways of the ruling Communist Party, the people are hearing more and more about what the government rather they not know.

A case in point was the collision last Saturday between two high-speed trains outside the city of Wenzhou, killing 39 people and injuring 192, including one little girl who wasn’t found for 21 hours.

The news of the crash was out within four minutes on China’s two large Twitter-like networks called weibos. While these micro blogs spread news of the crash, the official TV networks were providing saturation coverage of the mass killings in Norway.

When the mainstream and heavily censored media finally turned to covering the wreck, the Financial Times reports that the central propaganda office instructed journalists that the theme of their reporting should be “in the face of great tragedy, there should be great love.” And the coverage focused heavily on kindly rescue workers leading passengers from the wreckage.

According to The New York Times, a young girl watching from her window knew something the local railroad officials did not. Something had happened to the lead train. She posted on weibos, “It’s moving slower than a snail. I hope nothing happens to it.”

Something did because China’s vaunted high-speed rail system makes no provision for warning about trains that slow suddenly.

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