High Speed Rail Tragedy in China Reveals Small Minds in the West

July 25, 2011

If you suspect China is under a biased Western microscope being watched for every hiccup, the answer is “absolutely” yes and the evidence is overwhelming, while most of the world – especially the United States – is often ignored for the same sins and flaws.

On Saturday, July 23, 2011, China had its first railroad accident of the year, and it was reported globally with much criticism.

The Los Angeles Times shouts, “Deadly Chinese bullet train crash spawns anger, safety concerns”, and then reports that at least 43 people were killed and at least 200 injured.

The LA Times only had a few comments from readers and all that I read were insulting and negative of China.

MSNBC’s headline said, 32 die in China high-speed train crash and reported, “The total power failure rendered useless an electronic safety system designed to warn following trains of stalled trains on the tracks up ahead, and automatically halt them before a collision can occur.”

Comments such as this one followed the piece in MSNBC, “Anytime the Chinese get hosed by their own doing I just can’t feel bad for them… Better them than anyone else getting screwed by their quality control and reverse engineering.”

However, to be fair to MSNBC’s audience, there were many comments attacking ones such as the example I copied.  It was a lively debate worth reading.

Yahoo News was much more critical of China than MSNBC by focusing on safety and previous train wrecks in China dredging up as much dirt as possible.

One comment of many said, “the traffic safety in china is a joke. a very big joke. they don’t care about people, they care about face, they only interested in propaganda and fighting the big imperialist empire. they struggle to show the communism is working. guess what, is not working. so next time when you reverse engineering something do it completely. ever heard of Line blocks ? and throw the CTCS down the toilet and flush. twice.”

What causes such cruel and often evil reactions such as these from the Western media and readers?

Is it resentment because China is fast catching up to the United States as a global economic superpower?

Is it ethnic/racial hate because they are Chinese?

Is it envy because the quality of life is improving in China while life in the West is crumbling and burdened by debt?

Is it because they have a government run by China’s Communist Party?

One example of the “always beat up China” syndrome is a flawed and misleading opinion piece written by Charles Lane for The Washington Post.

Charles Lane wrote, “China’s bullet-train experience shows what can go wrong when an unelected elite, influenced by corrupt opportunists, gives orders that all must follow — without the robust public discussion we would have in the states.”

I wonder if Lane would include the “robust public discussion” we had in the states leading up to the 2008 global financial crises caused by American and Western greed and corruption.

I wanted to put Charles Lane’s Washington Post opinion to the test and I Googled the “history of global train wrecks” and found a detailed history going back to the early 19th century.

To save time and space, I decided to compare rail accidents starting from 2007 for only two of the world’s largest democracies and China.

It should be mentioned that both India and China rely on trains to move people much more than the United States, so we should expect more injuries and deaths from rail accidents in those countries. For that reason, I will compare the number of rail accidents to see which country has the best safety record.

The lowest score wins.

In 2007, there were thirty-three rail accidents listed for the world, and the United States had nine (27% of the total) killing seven and injuring more than a hundred, while India had three accidents killing 80 and injuring twelve.

China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had two rail accidents killing four and injuring two.

Score: United States 9, India 3 and China 2

In 2008, there were thirty-four rail accidents listed for the world, and the United States had eight (24%) with twenty-nine deaths and almost 300 injured, while India had one rail accident with no deaths or injured listed.

China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had one rail accident killing seventy-two and injuring 416.

Score: United States 17, India 4 and China 3

In 2009, there were thirty-nine rail accidents listed for the world, and the united States had seven (18%) with seventeen killed and five injured, while India had four accidents with thirty-two killed and 280 injured.

China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had two rail accidents killing seven and injuring 280.

Score: United States 24, India 8 and China 5

In 2010, there were fifty rail accidents listed for the world, and the United States had three (6%) with 32 injured, while India had fourteen rail accidents with hundreds killed and injured.

China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had one rail accident killing nineteen and injuring 71.

Score: United States 27, India 22 and China 6

This year by July 23, 2011, twenty-one train accidents were listed for the world, and the United States had eight (35%) killing eleven and injuring eighteen, while India had five accidents killing seventy-one and injuring two.

China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had one rail accident with at least 35 dead and 200 injured.

Score: United States 35, India 27 and China 7

From 2007 to July 23, 2011, the world had 177 rail accidents. The United States had 20% of the total, India 15% and China 4%. Source: List of Rail Accidents (Wiki)

When I Googled “train accident in China 2011” there were 55 million hits. It seems that popular “bad news” about China spreads fast and then the Western blame game begins, which represents Charles Lane’s “robust public discussion” in a democracy.

A few more interesting facts  to know before judging China’s rail system is that the average number of people traveling daily by train in China is 2.4 million, and in 2008, 1.456 billion people travelled 772.8 billion kilometers by rail.

I’d say with confidence that the odds are very good that if you travel by rail in China, you will reach your destination on time and without an accident.

A follow up post appeared two days later as More on China’s July 2011 Rail Accident and/or discover more of Really Fast Trains in and from China or China On the Fast Track

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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The Danger of False Truths – Part 3/3

July 23, 2011

In another e-mail, this “old” friend questioned China’s behavior in Asia and mentioned the disagreement between Vietnam and China over some offshore oil fields that both countries claim.

He felt this was a sign that China would wage war on other countries and inferred this would not happen if China were a democracy similar to the US, since “no democracy has ever gone to war with another democracy” (his words).

Soon after I received that e-mail, I used Google and found Democracies Do Not Make War on One Another … or Do They? by Matthew White, who does a great job throwing ice-cold water on another false truth.

White says, basically, it depends on the definition of democracy and that individuals will shift the meaning of the definition to fit what he or she wants to believe.

To come up with a set of probabilities, White studied the wars that took place in 1967 and came up with these results:

White wrote, “Now, 1967 is just a single year, but I’ve spent a good deal of this Atlas counting democracies. I can state with reasonable certainty that 44.5% of mapable sovereignties during the WW2-Y2K Era were full democracies. This calculates out to…

  • The odds of 2 random democracies going to war: 19.8%
  • The odds of 2 random non-democracies going to war: 30.8%
  • The odds of a random democracy going to war with a random non-democracy: 49.4%

He also mentions an interesting theory that “no two countries with a McDonald’s Restaurant have ever gone to war with one another”, which seems to indicate that as countries are incorporated into the global economy by trans-national corporations, they stop waging war on one another.

This theory is an individual truth that most of us might want to believe since there then should be no worry that the US and China will ever wage war.

In 2009, the US had 13,381 McDonalds and in 2010, China had almost 1,000 with thousands more planned. In addition, China has thousands of Pizza Huts, KFCs, Starbucks and the Chinese love to drive Buicks and Fords. Wal-Mart is even building stores in China.

However, I discovered the McDonald’s theory might be another false truth.

Pakistan has 25 McDonalds and the first one was built in 1998. India has 192 with the first built in 1996, and the last Indo-Pakistani War was in 1999.

Return to The Danger of False Truths – Part 2 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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The Danger of False Truths – Part 2/3

July 22, 2011

My “old” friend said, “It isn’t the fact that China has crooks, every nation has them. However, the degree of corruption in China is simply breathtaking. But not unexpected due to the fact it’s an oligarchy with strict censorship of anything deemed inappropriate by the ones who are the most open to corruption.”

My reply was to refer him to Transparency International, which identifies itself as the global coalition against corruption. The results are worth reading and provide compelling evidence that my “old” friend may be wrong since many democracies, according to Transparency International, are more corrupt than China.

Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index shows that nearly three quarters of the 178 countries in the index score below five, on a scale from 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt).”

Of 178 countries ranked for corruption, China tied with seven for a rank of 78 and a score of 3.5.  The countries China tied with were Colombia, Greece, Lesotho, Peru, Serbia and Thailand.

If you check the list of Electoral Democracies, you will discover that Greece, Peru, and Serbia are on it and many other electoral democracies have a lower rank than China.

For example, Argentina is ranked 105 with a score of 2.9.

India, often touted as the world’s largest democracy, is ranked 87th with a score of 3.3 and is home to a third of the world’s people that live in severe poverty.

In fact, according to Economy Watch, India’s underground economic corruption is believed to be 50% of the country’s GDP or $640 billion US dollars at the end of 2008.

Mexico is ranked 98 with a score of 3.1.

The Ukraine is ranked 134 with a score of 2.4.

The most telling evidence is Singapore, which did not make the Electoral Democracy list. However, Singapore shares 1st place with Denmark and New Zealand as the three countries with the least corruption in the world.

Qatar was ranked 19th and is an Emirate, which is similar to a monarchy or sultanate, but a government in which the supreme power is in the hands of an emir (the ruler of a Muslim state).

The US rank was 22 with a score of 7.1, which is a C- (good but not perfect).

The reason those 16,000 to 18,000 Chinese crooks fled China for mostly the US was because if caught, they would probably be executed.

In the US, all these crooks have to do is pay taxes then reap the rewards of their corruption in a land where more people go to prison than any country on earth. After all, Bonnie and Clyde are folk heroes in the US with a Hollywood movie.

Continued on July 23, 2011 in The Danger of False Truths – Part 3 or return to Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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The “BRICS” Emerging Powers Summit

June 22, 2011

On April 14, 2011, Chinese President Hu Jintao and leaders from Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa (countries now known as the BRICS) met on the far southern Chinese island-province of Hainan Island.

The most telling result of the summit was the decision to refuse mutual payments in US dollars. This means that the BRICS countries will give credits to one another in their national currencies and the development banks of these countries have signed an agreement about a further gradual withdrawal from loans in American dollars.

The move opened lines of credit in these countries national currencies in order to dilute their overreliance on the U.S. dollar as the BRICS seeks more independence from American political influence.

In addition, China and India agreed to reestablish defense ties and initiate closer border cooperation. China also agreed to deepen its “strategic partnership” with Russia. The biggest gains to come out of this summit may be the BRIC access to Africa due to its newest member, South Africa.

The BRICS nations now accounts for over 40% of the world’s population, but only 18% of its GDP in 2010 and the IMF says the BRIC nations will account for 21.6% of the world’s GDP by 2015, while the International Business Times reports that these nations are expected to represent 47% of the world’s GDP by 2030.


Aljazeera English says, “While many developed nations are struggling with the aftermath of the global recession, the economies led by the leaders of the BRICS nations are still booming.”

Another way to look at this is to compare the BRICS with the GDPs and labor force of the European Union and the United States.

We often hear that the United States has the largest GDP in the world, which was $14.72 trillion in 2010 with a labor force of 154.9 million as estimated by the CIA World Factbook.

The CIA World Factbook listed the European Union (probably due to the Euro) as the world’s largest economy at $14.89 trillion with a workforce of 225.2 million (2009 est.).

When we combine the GDPs and the labor force of the BRICS nations, we see a combined GDP of $21.079 trillion and a labor force of almost 1.5 billion people.  If the BRICS developed a standard currency as the European Union has done that would create the largest economy on the planet with largest work force.

The BRICS is also calling for a greater say on the UN Security Council, which only China and Russia have a permanent seat on now.

Goldman Sachs investment banker Jim O’Neill to highlight Brazil, China, Russia and India’s similarities in terms of their potential for development and growth, created the term BRIC. South Africa was not a member at the time.

To discover more about the BRIC/S see Move Over America, the BRIC is Coming, The Growing BRICs, Brazil’s Growth Depends on China and China Reaching out to South Africa

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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Playing With Numbers

June 1, 2011

For centuries, China was the world’s largest economy (from tenth to fifteenth century) and if experts at the International Monetary Fund and others are correct, China will soon regain the title as the world’s largest (healthy) economy.

However, it is confusing. If we listen to The Economist in The X Factor, we are told that India’s economic growth may soon outpace China’s.

The Economist says, MORGAN STANLEY thinks it could happen in 2013; the World Bank thinks it might happen next year. Many pundits have speculated about when India’s growth might outpace China’s.

However, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook says that has already happened since China grew by 10.3% in 2010 and India by 10.4%.

Then from Yahoo Finance we learn the IMF says, “According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016.”

After reading the previous paragraphs, it sounds as if India will grow its economy past China and China will outgrow the United States leaving the US in third place.

In fact, India is far from growing a larger economy than China or the US.

In 2010, India’s economy ranked 10th globally or fourth depending how you stack the numbers.

India’s nominal GDP was placed tenth at $1.53 trillion, while another way of looking at the numbers says India ranked fourth at $4.06 trillion, but its public debt was $758 billion or 55.9% of GDP with $201 billion in exports and $327 billion in imports and a credit rating of $1.164 trillion.

This means India, like the US, is spending more than it earns.

China, on the other hand, had a nominal GDP of $5.88 trillion but a GDP (based on PPP) of $10.08 trillion placing it 2nd globally.  China’s public debt was 17.5% of GDP, which is a long way from India’s 55.9%.  Everything else about China leaves India far behind China’s economy.

India’s exports were more than seven times lower than China’s $1.506 trillion while its imports were almost four times lower than China’s $1.307 trillion and China has a credit rating of $8.156 trillion—much higher than India.


China is likely to resume its role as the world’s largest economy by 2015.

Any way we look at it, how can India beat China unless they are talking about the annual percent of economic growth?

Considering how much smaller India’s economy is, they would have to have a lot more growth to equal China dollar for dollar.  If India’s economy grew by 10.4% and its economy was either $1.53 trillion or $4.06 trillion (depending how one looks at it), that is still a far cry from China’s 10.3% economic growth based on a much larger GDP.

On the other hand, America, the world’s largest economy, looks like a cancer patient with six months to live.

America may have the world’s largest GDP at $14.66 trillion but having $14 trillion in public debt at 93% of GDP just about cancels that out.  Even India is doing better.

Then America’s exports were $1.280 trillion compared to $1.948 trillion for imports telling us more money is pouring out than coming in. How will America pay off its debt if losses outpace earnings?

The Economist seems to want people to think India is beating China but the numbers tell a different story. To beat China, India has to grow a much larger economy and reduce its public debt while erasing an illiteracy and poverty rate that’s embarrassing for a country touted as the world’s largest democracy.

Anyone that studies history knows that a democracy survives if the citizens are literate and understands the issues.

Discover India Falling Short

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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