An open, thorough and independent investigation of China's fatal high-speed train accident, able to withstand close international scrutiny, is the only way to restore confidence in the country's rail system following the July 23 accident, analysts say.
The Chinese government is lobbying potential buyers of its high-speed rail systems in the United States, Britain, Brazil, Thailand, and South Africa. The global rail industry is worth about US$208 billion annually, according to Lloyd's Register, a British organisation that provides certification services in the energy and transport sectors.
'International experts and the countries to which China wants to export trains are going to ply China with tough questions. It should be able to stand up to this challenge, otherwise it has no chance [of exporting its rail products],' Kao Tsung-chung, an adviser to California's high-speed rail project, said.
China needs to adopt Germany's strategy after its train accident in Eschede in 1998, urged Kao, who is also a railroad professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign. The Eschede accident, which killed 101 people, was the world's only fatal high-speed train accident until 40 people were killed when two high-speed trains collided a few kilometres from Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, on July 23.
'What Germany did was establish a very thorough and open investigation,' Kao said. 'What they reported was convincing to the industry and academics. As a result, they believed the root causes were removed.'
People who believed the results of the German investigation included Chinese scientists and China's Ministry of Railways, given that the Beijing-Tianjin high-speed railway used the German Velaro train, Kao said. As a result, Germany's high-speed railway industry has recovered from the accident and its rail systems are now widely exported.