China Train Crash News Brought by Netizens on Weibo
Photo Credit: Color China Photo
Twitter’s Chinese counterpart, Weibo, has been the primary channel to inquire how the tragic high-speed train accident occurred last week.
The July 23 collision of two high-speed passenger trains near the eastern city of Wenzhou killed 40 people, left 191 injured and is proving to be an ailing political problem for Beijing.
Within the past week, the government’s growing dichotomy is wearing on Chinese citizen’s patience, as authorities have pledged transparency but suppressed the cause of the incident.
Premier Wen Jiabao, in a rare news conference last Thursday at the site of the deadly train wreck, promised an, “open and transparent,” investigation of an accident, which has incited questions on the safety of the country’s new high-speed rail system.
This comes in lieu of the Communist Party’s propaganda office instructing the media to play down coverage of the accident and emphasize positive news in their weekend reports. Chinese citizens have turned to Weibo to try and uncover what happened.
Weibo is the company Sina’s version of Twitter, and has over 100 million users.
Last week, there were ten million messages about the crash on Weibo and twenty million on Tencent’s QQ.com Weibo, the other major Chinese microblog. When combined, these two microblogging sites have more users than Twitter has worldwide.
When the crash first occurred, survivor Yangjuan Quanyang’s Weibo account broke the news by posting a plea for help at 8:47 pm local time. According to China Daily, she wrote, “Our train bumped into something. Our carriage has fallen onto its side. Children are screaming . . . Come to help us please! Come fast!”.
In ten hours, Yangjuan’s plight for help was reposted more than 100,000 times and the criticism continue to grow.
Chinese public opinion and doubts about the accident are all filled with anger. In user-created polls with hundred of thousands of votes, netizens illustrate that are wholeheartedly dissatisfied with how the government handled the crash.
Photo Credit: Penn Olson
Some of the questions they demand answers to are:
- What is the reason of the accident? What equipment was destroyed by lightning?
- Why the train body was buried, is it to cover up the evidence?
- Why give up the rescue work for early reopening? Rescue the little girl can be considered a miracle?
- Is the new Shanghai Railway Official competent? He was once demoted three years ago due to railway accident.
- How many deaths are there?
The CCP Propaganda Bureau has tried to control the media about reports on the incident, in an attempt to bury this information. After covering information on the crash all week, the Beijing News had an image of the weather forecast on its front page Saturday.
The Hong Kong Journalists Association condemned the Bureau’s efforts, saying it “is appalled by such a move and demands that the CCP Propaganda Bureau withdraw this directive and allows the media to report the truth freely.”
Instead of relying on the reports of these journalists, the citizens are reporting their own news to each other—usually more timely and accurate, still, than those of traditional sources.
Similar to citizens reporting on the Arab Spring uprisings, or recent photos and stories from the apocalyptic scene in Syria, civil society from around the world recognize the power of social media to hold their government’s accountable and circulate information to one another.
The Chinese working knowledge on the interworking of their communities, cities and country are slowly slipping from government control, and falling into netizens hands in 140 characters or less.
