Only hours after last week’s catastrophic Wang Fuk Court fire in Hong Kong—from which the death toll now stands at 159—tragedy struck again at Kunming’s Luoyang railway station. A test train ran into a group of workers in the early hours of the morning, killing 11 and injuring two more. Reuters’ report on the accident noted that two more workers were killed the same day in a separate incident in Sichuan province.
Many on Chinese social media were quick to link the Hong Kong and Kunming incidents. Some drew comparisons between Hong Kong authorities’ relatively open response and the Kunming station’s perfunctory handling. (As it soon turned out, Hong Kong’s response was much less open than might have been expected only a few years ago.) The station’s brief and formulaic official statement on the Kunming accident became a focus of criticism, not least because there was little expectation of anything else to focus on—as numerous voices have lamented, the sharply narrowed space for independent reporting and other information means that “for any news event that is even slightly ‘sensitive,’ if there is no official announcement, it will not be reported on at all.” Accidents are certainly deemed sensitive: as historian Jeremy Brown has written, they “bring social tensions and anxieties to the fore. They heighten grievances about inequality and unfairness. They exacerbate feelings of insecurity and helplessness.” (Brown discussed official responses to accidents and other “sudden incidents” in a 2017 interview with CDT.)
The two posts translated below, both published within a day of the Kunming accident, both voice frustration and anger at the perceived dismissiveness of the station’s announcement:
Test train collides with construction workers in accident at Kunming’s Luoyang Railway Station
In the early hours of November 27, during a test of seismic equipment, test train 55537 was proceeding normally along a curved section of track at Kunming’s Luoyang Station when a collision occurred with construction workers who had stepped onto the track, causing the deaths of eleven people and injury to two others. The railway department activated emergency protocols immediately after the collision and organized medical treatment and emergency rescue work in conjunction with the local government. The station’s transportation operations have now returned to normal, the wounded are receiving treatment, and related post-incident work is proceeding in an orderly manner. The exact cause of the accident is under investigation.
Railway authorities express their profound grief for those killed, and heartfelt sympathies to the families of the deceased and injured. Going forward, the responsible parties will be held accountable in accordance with laws and regulations, and lessons drawn from the accident will be profoundly absorbed to guarantee the safety and stability of railway operations. [Chinese]
Blogger Zuoyeben reacted angrily:
The Kunming railway station’s report was very prompt, perhaps issued within 10 hours of the accident … but there was not a speck of humanity in it. This was 11 people killed by a train in the middle of the night, not 11 people colliding with a train.
They casually issue this announcement, 200 or so characters of formulaic phrasing, more than half of it used to repeat all the usual nonsense: emergency protocols promptly activated, organized rescue, operations have returned to normal, the cause is under investigation … We think nothing of such indifference, because we see it so many times each year that we’ve grown numb to it.
The only unusual bit is the ending, which actually closes the loop: “Going forward, the responsible parties will be held accountable in accordance with laws and regulations, and lessons drawn from the accident will be profoundly absorbed to guarantee the safety and stability of railway operations.”
It’s as if the deaths of those 11 people have already been dealt with, and it’s now just an internal matter.
As if it never even happened.
Perhaps they feel that next to the many dozens who died in the Hong Kong fire, a mere 11 deaths is a minor matter.
They treat the deaths of 11 people due to the system’s negligence as indifferently as if the workers had crashed into the train. No names, no genders, no recourse—they’re given no more humanity than this sterile announcement that 11 people randomly died in the early hours … [Chinese]
“Canglang Hero” went into greater detail about the text and context, including station authorities’ closure of comments under the statement, the apparent lapses behind the incident, and the string of past incidents that produced similar promises of reform, but no visible results.
On the afternoon of the 26th, a major fire broke out in Hong Kong. It has already killed 44 people and injured 58 others. 279 are missing, and the outlook for them is bleak.
Early on the 27th—late last night, in fact—a train hit construction workers in an accident at a station in Kunming, killing 11 people and injuring two more.
If we can say that the urban fire was half natural disaster and half man-made, we can fairly say that the accident at the railway station was 100% man-made.
A group of workers who were scheduled to enter the track to carry out maintenance work at 12:50 a.m. actually began track replacement by 12:35 a.m.
A test train checking seismic monitoring equipment came screaming through at 114 km/h [over 70 mph].
They never stood a chance—movie-style miracles don’t happen in real life.
All lives may be equal in the event of a huge fire, but in a tragic accident like this, the victims are always the most ordinary people.
In fact, similar disparities were also a factor in the Hong Kong fire. As Joanna Chiu wrote at The Globe and Mail, for example: “Hong Kong is home to many dense aging public-housing estates like Wang Fuk Court, and many have the same issues: failing fire alarm systems, confusing or dimly lit emergency exits, limited maintenance budgets. […] By contrast, luxury towers in the same neighbourhoods enjoy modern fire-safety systems and regular upgrades. [… I]f there is a part of Hong Kong’s culture to blame, it appears that it’s inequality – not bamboo – that made the fire so deadly.” Canglang Hero continues:
The phrasing of the station’s announcement is quite telling.
First, that the train was “proceeding normally” cleverly lays blame for the accident on the maintenance crew, rather than the station.
Next, there was a “collision” between the train and the workers. I can’t find words to describe the mentality of someone who’d use the term “collision” in this context, but I firmly believe that this choice of words was no accident, but rather was carefully calculated to water down the violence of the train’s iron and steel smashing into and crushing flesh and blood workers.
After that, the notice stresses that “operations have now returned to normal.” I don’t know when “normal operations” and “emotional stability” became the top priorities in the wake of an accident.
The notice does “express profound grief for those killed, and heartfelt sympathies to the victims and their families,” but it’s really impossible to see any compassion in this text, let alone any sense of responsibility.
After the notice was posted, some of the victims’ relatives and online commenters asked, “Is ‘order restored’ your best response to the loss of 11 lives?”
The station didn’t offer any explanation or consolation—they just high-handedly shut down the comments section, hiding all 717 responses.
I don’t understand the railway management system, but in the case of this accident there was undoubtedly a serious shortcoming in the dispatch mechanism. It’s even possible that this kind of negligence was there all along, and it’s pure luck that such an accident hadn’t happened in the past.
When I call this negligence, I’m not just making an unfounded accusation.
For one thing, at the start of this year, the railway department began using a “3-minute coordinated control” system, using a CTCS-3-tier train control system to ensure that trains run with no less than three minutes between them.
This system reportedly includes equipment on the tracks as well as wireless networks and train control systems to algorithmically control the precise location of each train down to the second with real-time monitoring and adjustment, in order to reduce the risk of rear-end collisions.
If this system can’t even detect a large group of human beings, how can it prevent rear-end collisions?
Professionals believe that in this accident, “the dynamic data-exchange system was effectively inoperative.”
Secondly, the railway department uses a management system of so-called “work windows,” with scheduled construction windows, maintenance windows, “vertical” windows, and “V-shaped” windows.
This accident resulted from a problem with a maintenance window—although the workers were scheduled to enter the area at 12:50 a.m., they actually entered the site at least 15 minutes earlier. Clearly this “work window” management system only exists on paper.
The notice goes on to say that “lessons drawn from the accident will be profoundly absorbed to guarantee the safety and stability of railway operations.”
We’ve heard these promises too often. As for how they’ll rectify things, or how well they’ll do it, no one knows.
On June 4, 2021, nine people working on the line were struck and killed by the K596 on the Lanzhou-Xinjiang railway at Jinchang in Gansu province.
On June 4, 2024, a freight train struck and killed six workers on the line from Suihua to Jiamusi in Heilongjiang province.
Let’s take a look at the official statement from 2024.
[…] Note the similar wording: “Lessons drawn from the accident will be profoundly absorbed, and similar accidents resolutely prevented from occurring again.”
But no one knows what lessons they drew, nor have we seen how they “resolutely prevented similar accidents from occurring again.”
All we’ve seen are similar accidents, one after another. [Chinese]
The Kunming accident did prompt the announcement of a nationwide safety overhaul by the National Railway Administration last week, after “a meeting convened Monday by the administration to implement directives from central leadership. Chaired by Song Xiude, the administration’s Party chief and minister, the meeting called on all affiliated institutions — including China State Railway Group — to learn from the tragedy,” China Daily reported. “It also stressed the political responsibility of ensuring railway safety and stability, urging unified thinking and heightened awareness across the system.”
