The high speed rail that China has developed and is now using in their country is going to revolutionize travel there and ultimately in the future all over the world. Although they are putting lives at risk just to be the first to get it out there.
Last year there was a crash between two trains on the tracks that led to 40 people being killed. The officials said that it was because of a lightening strike that caused a technical malfunction. Upon further investigation they found out almost 170 glitches in the trains with about 100 of them coming from how they were manufactured. This caused over 50 trains to be recalled.
This is going to surely lead to some skepticism for the future on whether or not China’s plans are really ethical. There will be questions of whether or not they want to do this to help their country grow or if they just want to be the first ones to do something with no thoughts about the actual quality.
Just about a month ago, after fixing the areas on the track that were supposedly causing some of the problems and were going to open in May have just collapsed. Clearly hoping that it would all just go away after they made some quick fixes it has once again backfired in China’s face with another major error. If I were in China and even debating whether or not to ride and the massive crash hadn’t convinced me this sure would. The safety is just not there and they clearly don’t care enough to fix that. They are continuing to dig themselves a hole and killing their reputation. It’s a nice idea to create a train that goes as fast as it does but going that fast is extremely unsafe and no doubt that kind of speed and force on tracks will overtime wear it out. You need to create an extremely stable base and continue to do lots of maintenance.
China was accused of stealing the model of their trains from companies like Kawasaki and Siemens AG. They had once been partners and had given their trains to China. China took the technology from those trains and learned how to make them and they can make them much cheaper. They made their own trains, which looked very similar to Kawasaki, and Siemens AG’s trains with only a few cosmetic changes. China denied these accusations saying that they were different and were faster.
Clearly they did not take enough time to learn how to properly make these trains and everything that went into their design. They also must have used too cheap of materials which could have been one of their big flaws.
This was very frowned upon by a lot of people when they saw that China did this. You do not become partners with someone and then steal their ideas that they came up with and call it your own. This all just seems like too much with stealing ideas, creating the same product but with obvious flaws, a devastating crash, and then more flaws in the tracks. This is not the way to build a good reputation and a solid foundation for a strong flourishing country on the rise.
The Minister of the Railway Liu Zhijun reported took over 150 million in brides for the project. This is definitely the perfect evidence to explain all the problems about the rail. Zhijun was probably bribed to get the train up and running faster than it should have been and there would’ve needed to be some shortcuts taken in order for that to be done. The shortcuts would lead to some safety hazards that eventually come back to bite Zhijun.
Putting it all together it makes sense why all the problems with the trains have come about but in the end it was not worth the rush. It cost people their lives and if Zhijun is still running the show there would be likely more to come sadly. Someone needs to take over that position and shut the whole project down for a while and take the time to create the safety measures that need to be taken and then it will work.
By: Brendan Lemp
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