NY Times: “Henry Cao has stark memories of the moment the high-speed train he was riding rear-ended another last summer in the eastern city of Wenzhou: the pleasantly hypnotic rocking that gave way to a jolt he likened to an earthquake, followed by blackness and the sensation of falling as the car plummeted 100 feet off a viaduct.
“We were flying like rag dolls,” he said.
The crash killed 40 passengers, injured 191 and shook the nation’s confidence in its ambitious high-speed rail system. Mr. Cao, 33, a Chinese-American importer from Colorado, barely survived; he lost a kidney and his spleen, and head injuries have left him mired in a perpetual daze, unable to stay awake for more than an hour or two. His parents, naturalized American citizens taking him on a triumphant tour of their native land, were killed.
As Mr. Cao has struggled to recover over the past year, he has found himself drained by a different sort of battle: trying to wrest compensation from the Ministry of Railways, an unbending government behemoth unaccustomed to dealing with determined foreign citizens.
This month Mr. Cao returned to China for the first time since the accident. He and his brother, Leo, came to collect their parents’ remains and to press negotiations with the ministry. “They know how to wear you down,” said Leo Cao, 30. “First they let you scream and yell, then they stall you, and finally they tell you vague and empty words. Now they say, ‘You’re lucky you’re getting anything.’ ”
Their painful and politically fraught odyssey has highlighted the workings of an omnipotent ministry that employs more than two million people and rivals the Chinese military in size and influence. The experience has been disorienting for the Cao brothers, who left China as adolescents two decades ago. “This place is not how I remember it,” said Henry Cao, speaking faintly as his eyes flickered and lost focus. “Everyone is rushing around to make money. Life here is cheap.”
The ministry, which runs its own court system and is largely impervious to oversight, has long been dogged by accusations of corruption. A former rails minister, Liu Zhijun, who was fired five months before the accident, is expected to go on trial next month for charges of taking millions of dollars in bribes and other unnamed “disciplinary violations.”
Zhang Kai, a lawyer who represented a passenger sentenced to three years in prison for slapping a train conductor, described the ministry as a “monster left over from the planned economy era” that resists reform or challenges to its authority. “It is common knowledge that the ministry is responsible for generating maximum profits while supervising itself,” Mr. Zhang said.
In a report released in December, government investigators placed the blame for the Wenzhou accident on flaws in signaling equipment. Investigators say the ministry bypassed safety regulations in its haste to create the world’s largest high-speed railroad network.”
via In China, Sons Fight Railways Ministry Over Crash – NYTimes.com.
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