Hasty high-speed rail expansion may be behind Zhejiang crash

The rapid expansion of China’s high-speed rail network over the last five years may have contributed to a train crash over the weekend, Bloomberg reported, citing analysts. At least 43 people were killed and more than 200 were injured when a bullet train lost power after it was struck by lightning, then was rear-ended by another train in China’s eastern Zhejiang province. “China is building too quickly,” said Zhao Jian, an economics professor at Beijing Jiaotong Univeristy. “The result is this kind of accident.” On Sunday, the Railway Ministry announced it had fired the chief, deputy chief and Chinese Communist Party secretary at the Shanghai Railway Bureau, which administers most of the country’s coastal rail network. The crash follows a series of technical mishaps with the high-speed network, including multiple electrical breakdowns on the US$34 billion Beijing-Shanghai line, which opened June 30.