The title of the lead article in today’s Wall Street Journal (July 30-31, 2011) , “Trouble on the China Express“, ironically may 
answer the question my dinner companions had for me last night. They asked, “Do you think China has overtaken the US and moved us into the 2nd place among nations”? The Journal‘s use of the bullet train crash last week (plummeting off a viaduct after a lightning strike, killing 40 people and injuring 190 more) is, as the paper writes, “an apt metaphor for the country’s hurtling economy over the past decade: a colossal investment project, born of the state, steeped in corruption, built for maximum velocity, and imposed paternalistically on a public”.
“Do not be desirous to have things done quickly”, said Confucius 25 centuries ago. It ” prevents their being done thoroughly”. But the Chinese leaders have hyped high-speed rail with abandon. Using imported technology, they have modified the designs and sold them as their own. A few weeks ago, the Railways Minister bragged that its technology was so superior to Japan’s that “they cannot be mentioned in the same breath”.
And it’s not just the technological glitches. The bullet train project (planned to stretch 10,000 miles at a $300 billion cost by 2020), appears to be riddled by corruption. One Chinese blogger (and there are 485 million Chinese using the Internet) wrote: “When a country is corrupt to the point that a single lightning strike can cause a train crash, the passing of a truck can collapse a bridge, and drinking a few bags of milk powder can cause kidney stones, none of us are exempted”.
The Journal concludes: The crash “has transformed a symbol of Beijing’s pride into an emblem of incompetence and imperious governance”. Does that answer my dinner companions’ question?
Discussion questions:
1. What impact can corruption have on efficient OM?
2. What are the concerns about such rapid expansion?
3. What other quality crises has China faced recently?
And we have none of these problems????
Terry,
We sure do! But my feeling is that our democracy is our strongest strategic advantage. Corruption is present, but not nearly to the level of most developing countries. And no one can ever accuse the US of rushing into high-speed rail lines Many governors don’t even want to federal money to build them.