High speed rail deserves better than just criticism

"China is building faster trains and newer airports […] We have to do better." This was a remark by US President Barack Obama in the State of Union Address in 2011. However, despite the president's grand ambition and the administration spending nearly $11 billion to develop high-speed rail, the US "still lags far behind Europe and China," noted The New York Times in a recent article.

China's high-speed railway is remarkable not only in terms of its pace of development - by the end of 2013, the overall length of China's high-speed rail project had reached 11,028 kilometers, the longest network in the world. But also, its achievement can be measured by its global influence.

Many foreign observers call China's railway development a triumph, while worrying about its expansion all over the world, be it from Southeast Asia to Europe.

They also coined the term "high-speed railway diplomacy" to describe China's endeavor for both economic and geopolitical reach.

Yet some Chinese people don't take it as something to be proud of. "China is more advanced in high-speed rail than the US, but it also has more corrupt officials than the US." "The US doesn't need high-speed rail because it has had technological marvel in cars and airplanes, while China's high-speed railway has developed at the cost of people's lives," Some Web users claimed.

Many people still cannot refrain from highlighting the deadly train collision in the eastern coastal city of Wenzhou three years ago. Serious design flaws in crucial signaling equipment were blamed for the tragedy. An online wave of public outrage emerged to slash at the government's handling of the aftermath of the tragedy.

The accident served as a setback for the country's hopes to develop high-speed rail into fully-fledged technology. What was worse, the public became inclined to take such public incidents as systemic flaws, and considered whatever the authorities did to be incomplete or a whitewash.

But undeniably, as high-speed rail development forges ahead, this infrastructure development has brought convenience to the general public and connected a nation subjected to economic disparities. It has also helped China gain confidence when it performs on the global stage.

China has been drawing experience from this past tragedy to further develop the high-speed railway project. Any new emerging objects will encounter concerns and doubts in the development process. The high-speed rail program needs the support and encouragement of the entire society to become a transport as well as a diplomatic tool that society can feel proud of.