Not to mention the Qingdao train accident You mean Zibo train incident. To which the first reaction was:
You mean Zibo train incident. To which the first reaction was:
Right. The train was on the way from Beijing to Qingdao and derailed at Zibo.
Yes, it is standard operating procedure, in China as everywhere, to put the blame on human error when billions of dollars of investment stand to be lost if true causes turn out to be more damning, especially when national honor is at stake. Investigators will even go so far as to tamper with evidence.
See the Airbus A320 disaster in Muhouse, France, for instance: Pilot Error Is Blamed in Airbus Crash - New York Times A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
(Incidentally, from a Japanese perspective, firing higher-up's for the egregious failures of those they are responsible for is completely logical and a matter of course. And ultimately I believe this view of responsibility comes from Confucianism. Although I did not think that this notion of responsibility was still active in China today, perhaps it in fact is, and if so, would be another reason why firing the head of the local railway bureau chief and the local Party Secretary would make perfect sense in this situation.) A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
