Attempts by censors in China to cover up online criticism about a high-speed train collision have not gone down well among the social media network-savvy younger generation in the country.
The 23 July accident killed 40 and injured 191.
Internet users have railed against what they see as attempts to rush through rail construction ahead of safety considerations. And that’s not the only thing are unhappy about: they are seething about attempts to censor the tragedy.
“These days, efforts to seal off the flow of opinion can’t work like it did before,” said a former investigative reporter for a party-run daily in a telephone interview with Reuters. “These crude censorship steps used to have some effect, but now the speed of the flow of information has surpassed them. On the contrary, the word about such restrictions simply deepens people’s distrust in government.”
See full Reuters report.
Some lessons for us here about how easily people’s trust can be broken by censors. And how futile it is to try and cover-up in this age of Twitter and Facebook.
Even the people in authoritarian countries such as China are waking up and making their voices heard.
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I will praise any govt that better the nation and developments that will benefit her citizens. We are talking of modern developments where mishaps do happen and there are definitely, room for improvements….not like some narrow minded creep only thinkin and engaging himself with everything on political ideologies!
The Zhejiang bullet train accident was purely a human error….which those responsible officers were sacked. I was at another train, I must admit I am pretty impressed compared to before… the introduction of these fast machines. They have built new mega stations, cleaned and the passengers were channel orderly to the coaches…imagine, they could do all these with a 1.5bil population! This unfortunate accident was a human error, these things happened…. also, in Europe and other parts of the world. Personally, the Chinese passengers were more a pain rather than the set up and the administration. The Chinese know how… Read more »
Oh, you are praising the COMMUNIST government ~