From the Readers

Lack of transparency

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-19 08:04

What I found terrible when I read this article was not so much the complaints about the high ticket prices, the logic of having two high-speed rails running side by side between the same cities, or the buffer zone of only 22.5 meters from the track, but the lack of transparency in the development of such projects.

I will never forget how the controversial project of the National Theater in Beijing was imposed on the people - building starting secretly while the whole country was overjoyed following the announcement of Beijing as the host city of the 2008 Olympics.

According to workers on a Shanghai construction site, preliminary work is already being carried out for the estimated 22 billion yuan rail project that authorities maintain is only in a "feasibility studies" phase. Answers to protesters' questions are vague and unreliable. Why doesn't Japan and Germany, countries that are capable of building electromagnetic lines, have the system themselves? Chinese taxpayers want to know where their money goes to, but it seems they are being kept in the dark.

China is large and it has a huge number of migrant workers. Tradition requires people to return home for national festivals. More trains and faster transportation are obviously needed across the country to support such travel. But the new transport services must cater to people's needs and spending power, not serve as monuments of glory for the government.

Lisa Carducci, Beijing,via e-mail

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(China Daily 04/19/2010 page9)