The rapid and successful economic development of China so far has been presented as the superiority of central planning over the approach taken, for example, by India. It is the Beijing development model as some would say. Authoritarian top-down approach gets things done, unlike the messy democratic means from the bottom up. All those criticisms weigh things down needlessly.
The recent high-speed train disaster that killed nearly 40 persons[1] should give advocates of the authoritarian approach a considerable pause the next time they try to sell the Beijing model over democratic ones. Reports are coming out that these infrastructure projects were rushed for the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party.[2] Results do not look good for the Chinese government.
The Beijing way of doing things has become controversial, especially after the accident.
How much of infrastructure projects all around China suffer from abuse of power or corruption in general? Was the accident a symptom of a rotten system?
Between authoritarian and democratic states, the former lacks real mechanism to make the state accountable. It will be hard to answer the questions even in democratic states, much less in ones like China’s.
Typical of authoritarian governments, the Chinese government is trying to muzzle investigations into the incident.[3] This is amid angry allegations of corruption with respect to these projects and specifically, the high-speed train system. That is an example how there is little accountability in China. Any reprimand is for public show only. Such reprimands have proven to be inconsequential. In Malaysian parlance, small fish.
Even before the train disaster, the system was already suffering from service interruptions, barely weeks after its official opening. Something must be wrong when so many glitches happened so frequently so soon.
Something is rotten in the state of China. That rottenness is the cost of the authoritarian model. There is a cost to absence of check and balance, of accountability, of freedom. It is a shame somebody has to die to learn that.
While India suffered from embarrassing criticisms before and during the last Commonwealth Games due to perhaps their incompetence in meeting deadlines, at least we knew the problems before it was too late. Remedies were taken. For China, there is a guessing game: which one is the facade and which one is real. As the train disaster showed, we found out about the rotten apples way too late.
[1] — BEIJING—The first high-speed train passed through the tracks where a deadly train collision occurred in eastern China, as authorities sought to soothe public concern over safety and the handling of the accident as well as jitters about the future of its prized high-speed rail system. [Norihiko Shirouzu. Beijing Seeks to Soothe Train Jitters. Wall Street Journal. July 26 2011]
[2] — China’s high-speed rail line between Beijing and Shanghai has been beset by glitches in the two weeks since it opened to great fanfare on the eve of the Chinese Communist Party’s 90th anniversary celebration. [David Pierson. China’s high-speed rail glitches: Racing to make errors?. Los Angeles Times. July 16 2011]
[3] — BEIJING — China has banned local journalists from investigating the cause of a deadly high-speed train crash that has triggered public outrage and raised questions over safety, reports said Tuesday. [Allison Jackson. China seeks to muzzle reporting on train crash. AFP. July 26 2011]