Wang Dexue in tears.

The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by central government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online.

Central Propaganda Department: With regards to State Administration of Work Safety Vice Director Wang Dexue crying during his inspection of the collapse of the Lianluo Highway Yichang Bridge, do not sensationalize the story. (February 4, 2013)
中宣部：对国家安监局副局长王德学视察连霍高速义昌大桥垮塌事故现场时流泪一事，不炒作。

The February 4 crash in Henan Province left ten dead and 11 injured. The local government states that it will compensate victims and their families according to “Henan standard,” which differs according to household registration (hukou): over RMB400,000 for urban hukou holders, but only up to RMB180,000 for rural hukou [zh].

Wang Dexue’s tears at the scene of the crash are assumed by many to be insincere. He has earned the nickname “New Watch Brother” (新表哥), after the Shaanxi official photographed grinning at the scene of a road accident last summer. “New Watch Brother” is already blocked from Sina Weibo search results.

“According to the relevant laws and regulations, search results for ‘New Watch Brother’ cannot be displayed.”

Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to these instructions as “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.” CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Henan, household registration, hukou, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, sina weibo, traffic accidents, Wang Dexue, weibo
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Snow, ice and fog have caused havoc on the nation’s roads and at train stations and airports, according to reports from the Xinhua News Agency and China Daily.

[...] More than 10,000 people were stranded at Chengdu airport in southwest Sichuan province yesterday after heavy fog caused authorities to close the airport and ground more than 100 flights, Xinhua said in a separate report.

[...] Four people died and 64 others were injured in three separate road accidents in eastern China yesterday, Xinhua said, citing information from local authorities. Slippery road conditions from persistent rain and snow over the past few days may have caused the accidents, traffic police were cited as saying.

Bloomberg’s Feiwen Rong cites a report from China National Grain and Oils Information Center saying that the extended cold weather has affected crop yields in southern growing regions. Carolynne Wheeler at The Globe and Mail looks into the impact the weather is having on China’s economy :

Emergency shelters have sprung up in Anhui province. Some 400,000 people have been left in a state of emergency in Guizhou province while workers use bamboo poles to clear ice from power lines. There are widespread disruptions in power and running water and an old debate over whether the Chinese government should supply public heating in the south as it does in the north has been resurrected.

But just as important is the cold’s effect on the food supply. Some 180,000 cattle have died from the cold in the north; thousands of hectares of crops have also been damaged.

As a result, while non-food inflation came in last month at a respectable 1.7 per cent, food prices, which make up nearly one-third of the weighting, jumped 4.2 per cent from this time last year. Vegetable prices soared 14.8 per cent year-on-year, or 17.5 per cent month-on-month.

The numbers are expected to get worse in the first two months of 2013, since prices traditionally rise ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday, also known as Spring Festival, which this year falls in mid-February. And 11 days into January, Beijing’s cold temperatures show no signs of abating yet.

Despite the heavy losses, some analysts believe that inflation will remain manageable. From David Pierson at Los Angeles Times:

Higher food prices also worry the Chinese government because discontent rises when poorer people have to pay a bigger share of their income on food. Chinese households spend more than 20% of their earnings on food, or more than three times as much as U.S. households spend, according to the American Enterprise Institute.

[...] ”In all, we are still not particularly concerned about high inflation in 2013,” Louis Kuijs, an economist for the Royal Bank of Scotland, said in a research note Friday.

[...] Analysts said prices for food probably will continue to rise as demand soars during the Chinese New Year national holiday next month, then will level off.

Meanwhile, Jason Samenow at the Washington Post traces the origin of this cold front:

The cold is China has mostly originated from sprawling arctic high pressure systems in Siberia where, according to the New York Times: “thousands of people were left without heat when natural gas liquefied in its pipes and water mains burst.”

Some of this arctic air has bled even further south and west.

[...] As some of the deadly cold air mass was drawn into the Middle East earlier this week, it clashed with warm, moist air from the Mediterranean, leading to the snowstorm we reported on yesterday, which blanketed Jerusalem with 4-8 inches of snow.

Long range forecast models show some relief from the cold in China with normal to above normal temperatures in the coming week.

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Post tags: agriculture, CPI, extreme weather, flight delays, food prices, inflation, traffic, traffic accidents, transportation
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On January 1, 2013, it became illegal to drive through both red and yellow lights in the Asian country. Those cited more than once will likely lose their driving privileges. The aggressive rule follows a crackdown by Chinese authorities aimed at reducing the estimated 250,000 road traffic fatalities the country experiences each year – a figure that makes road accidents the leading cause of death among residents between the ages of 15 and 44, says the World Health Organization.

A Caixin news brief reports the specific penalties of the new regulation, and the online uproar that the law caused:

[...]The law, put into effect by the Ministry of Public Security’s Traffic Management Bureau on January 1, requires drivers to come to a full stop at a yellow light. If they fail to do so, drivers will have six points deducted from their license. (Drivers who lose 12 points from their licenses in a year lose them.) People have taken to their Weibo accounts to complain that more accidents will be caused by people driving slower in anticipation of a green light turning yellow.[...]

CNN translates a few Weibo comments, giving us a glimpse into the online chatter surrounding the new rule:

“I’m among the first victims of the new rule,” wrote netizen @SunYiXuan on Chinese microblogging website Sina Weibo, “I hit the car before me this morning when the driver slammed on the brake when the light turned yellow. Slow down when you’re 1 km away from the traffic lights. Good luck my friends.”

 [...]“If yellow light equals red light, we don’t even need green lights any more. On and off of one light can do the work,” @YuJianShouQing posted.A poll on Weibo shows 13,000 users, or 84%, of netizens who responded considered the new rule as “unacceptable”.

A poll on Weibo shows 13,000 users, or 84%, of netizens who responded considered the new rule as “unacceptable”.

China Daily went to the street to see what a Beijing taxi driver thinks about the rule:

Jiang Mingsheng, a taxi driver in Beijing who has 33 years’ driving experience, said the regulations have put him under pressure when he drives past road crossings, as many traffic lights in Beijing do not have countdown timers.

“I ran a yellow light the other day. I was meters away from the stop line and the lights suddenly turned yellow. I was almost in the middle of the road after I put my brakes on and stopped the vehicle,” he said.

“I don’t think anyone would be able to stop the vehicle in that case,” he said.

A more recent Caixin news brief reports that, after negative public reaction to the law was widely expressed, the Ministry of Public Security has softened penalties on drivers who fail to stop at yellow lights:

The Ministry of Public Security says drivers breaking a new rule on running yellow lights will be warned, but not lose points from their licenses. The ministry made the announcement on January 6, and said the change was in response to objections from the public.

The Economist has more on the ministry’s decision to heed public opinion, and offers a comment on what this says about the relationship between public opinion and official conduct:

The official response to the uproar was prompt and surprisingly conciliatory. On January 6th the public-security ministry shifted into reverse, announcing that in the light of public opinion, it was suspending enforcement of the yellow-light rule while it re-examined the idea. For now, violators will be “educated” rather than punished. The announcement even thanked the “broad masses” for speaking up.

On non-political issues, the urban populace is ever less shy about challenging officialdom. But it is still rare for Chinese officials, especially the police, to yield to public opinion. Whether the episode heralds more significant shifts in the relationship between China’s rulers and ruled, it may be too soon to say.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ministry of Public Security, online public opinion, public opinion, traffic accidents, traffic rules, yellow light rule
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Hu Jun was convicted of involuntary homicide by the Nanhai District People’s Court in the city of Foshan, Guangdong Province, where the girl, named Wang Yue, was hit and crushed by Hu’s minibus and another vehicle on Oct. 13.

[…] An earlier statement by the court said Hu was driving in dim lighting conditions amid torrential rain without turning on the headlights of his vehicle. He thought he had hit something but failed to stop and check.

The court said it also issued a lenient sentence because Hu gave himself up to police and paid part of the victim’s medical expenses.

The case earned particular notoriety not because of the accident itself but because of the eighteen passers-by who did nothing to help the injured child. Their inaction revived discussion of China’s supposed moral decline, and of the problem of “Good Samaritans” being sued by the very people they were trying to help. The most prominent case was that of Peng Yu, a young Nanjinger who, after coming to the aid of a fallen elderly woman in 2006, was successfully sued for knocking her over in the first place. The judge’s reasoning, that Peng could have had no reason for helping her except a guilty conscience, sparked an outcry, but his conclusion and the woman’s claims later turned out to be correct.

See more on Wang Yue’s case at Shanghaiist.

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Post tags: Foshan, Good Samaritan, Guangdong, hit-and-run, moral crisis, traffic accidents, Yueyue
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Xinhua cited a Tianjin traffic official as saying the bus was speeding and that many passengers were thrown out of the vehicle when it hit the car and rolled over.

In eastern Anhui province, at least 10 people died and 19 were injured in a 24-vehicle pileup on an expressway as foggy weather reduced visibility, the Beijing News daily said.

Eleven people in a van were killed after a truck crashed into the vehicle in central Henan province, the newspaper said.

Serious traffic accidents are common in China due to often overloaded vehicles and poorly trained drivers who often ignore traffic laws.

Overcrowding also contributed to the deaths of 41 people in a Henan bus fire in July. Operators frequently take on extra passengers outside official stops and stations in order to expand thin profit margins, but this can lead to overloading and bypassed safety checks.

The holiday also saw Chinese railway police catch 1,777 ticket scalpers around the country, according to Xinhua.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: accidents, National Day, public transportation, railways, road accidents, road safety, traffic accidents
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So why is China’s headed in a different? It is not due to a lack of traffic regulations, but rather because these rules are often deliberately ignored, particularly by the rich, privileged and powerful. The social injustice behind this issue has led to an increase in concern from the public… Even in more serious accidents, the rich believe their money can fix their mistakes while the privileged and powerful can settle such cases with their connections. Professor Kong Qingdong of Peking University has remarked publicly: “[Beijing's policy of] ‘letting some people get rich first’ certainly does not mean to let such immoral guys get rich first”.

The public antipathy toward the newly rich also manifests the country’s dangerously growing wealth gap. China’s Gini coefficient – a measure of statistical dispersion – was 0.47 in 2007, well above the international alert line of 0.4. Even Ma Kai, the former director of the National Development and Reform Commission, admitted the country’s income disparity is widening. Many people believe that some wealth collection is associated with official corruption. Professor Mao Shoulong of Renmin University says the general dislike for the rich could be better interpreted as a “hatred of unfairness”.

Behind the traffic accidents there is the issue of social injustice which is a major source of growing public discontent. According to Professor Qing Lianbin of the Central Party School, such a mentality will definitely affect social harmony.

For more information, see past CDT posts on traffic accidents and the growing economic divide.

[Image courtesy of the People's Daily]

© cschultz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: traffic accidents, wealth gap
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Investigators on Tuesday blamed speeding for China’s worst train accident in a decade, a disaster that killed at least 70 people and injured more than 400.

The finding was announced by an investigation panel set up by China’s Cabinet, the State Council, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. It came just a little more than 24 hours after the two passenger trains collided in Shandong province in eastern China.

The investigation found one of the trains was traveling at 81 miles per hour before the accident, far over the section’s speed limit of 50 mph, Xinhua said.

Read also Overspeeding blamed for deadly train collision in east China from Xinhua, and Setback for China’s expanding railway from BBC News.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: accidents, railway, road accidents, traffic accidents
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Dozens were injured or killed when two passenger trains collided in eastern China early on Monday and 10 carriages toppled into a ditch, the official Xinhua news agency, a doctor and two hospitals said.

One train was en route from Beijing to eastern city of Qingdao when the accident happened in Zibo, Shandong province. The second train was travelling between Yantai, in Shandong, and Xuzhou in the neighbouring province of Jiangsu.

“More than 80 people are injured, both seriously and not as seriously,” an official at the Number 148 Hospital in Zhoucun district told Reuters.

An official at another hospital, the Zhoucun District People’s Hospital in Zibo city, said injured passengers had been admitted, but did not say how many or if there had been any deaths.

Witnesses and a government spokesman also said there were heavy casualties in the collision in Shandong which caused the carriages to topple into a ditch, Xinhua reported.

The following are instructions on how to handle this news from Party propaganda officials to major Chinese online news websites and blog hosting portals soon after the accident happened, according to this Chinese blog:

“About reports related to ‘Passenger train T195 collides with passenger train 5034′，all websites can only use information from Xinhua and other major media belonging to the Central Committee. Do not post this item in prominent positions, let it naturally be pushed down (on websites, by other subsequent news items), do not allow comments, do not open specific topic pages, do not put this news at the top of online forum or blogs, do not recommend it in any way.”

“关于’T195与5034次旅客列车相撞’有关报道，各网站只转载新华社等中央主要新闻媒体的消息，不放要闻区，自然滚动，不开跟帖，不开专题，论坛和博客等不置顶、不推荐。 ”

UPDATED at 23:00 pm April 27: Apparently, these instructions have been somewhat changed. This news is now in a prominent position on all major online news portal, such as news.sina.com, news.sohu.com and news.163.com, and comments are selectively open as well.

Photos are from creader.net and dwnews.com:

See also an AP report, “Some slept, some stood before deadly derailment in China.” and a CCTV news report (via AP video, in Chinese) which has footage of the crash site:

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: accidents, railway, road accidents, traffic accidents
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From Reuters:

……China has the most dangerous roads in the world, with accidents killing almost 100,000 people last year, or about 270 a day.

The high toll is largely a result of negligence, with drivers commonly switching lanes without looking or signaling, ignoring traffic lights and even throwing their vehicles into reverse when they have missed a highway exit. [Full Text]

-Read Yan Zhao Metropolis’ report (in Chinese) of ” The Thoughts of Less Injury Than Killing Harms Everyone“, saying China’s accident compensation system need to be strengthened and perfeced. Among many traffic accidents, especially motor vehicle drivers have been a general lack of knowledge of traffic laws.

-Also related to road safety in China, read “Driving Them Crazy” from the Washington Post:

(...)
Read the rest of Beijing braces for holiday chaos as smog settles – Reuters (117 words)

© Wu Nan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: driving, road safety, traffic accidents
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