PLA comes out fighting after troops blamed for causing bridge tragedy

The case of the collapse of the Rainbow Bridge in Sichuan seemed to have been settled on April 3 when the county's deputy party secretary, Lin Shiyuan, was sentenced to death for graft and dereliction of duty. Yet for the PLA, the saga was not over.

It was angered by claims that the collapse in Qijiang county, near Chongqing, was caused by members of the People's Armed Police (PAP), who were training on the bridge when it fell. Of the 40 people killed, 18 were from the force.

'There is one aspect about the accident that has been overlooked,' said the Zhawen News, a subsidiary of the official Hebei Daily, in a late February edition.

'And that is the lack of basic scientific knowledge among our PAP fighters. If they had known a little physics, they wouldn't have chanted 'one, two, three' during their run on the bridge that ended with such fatal consequences.' In other words, the paper accused the officers of chanting in unison and generating acoustic resonance that amplified pressure, causing the bridge to collapse.

The article hit the three-million-strong army like a thunderbolt. Letters and faxes were sent to troops across the country, voicing concern over the matter.

The Liberation Army Daily, the PLA paper, said: 'Some people with ulterior motives are whipping up opinion and misleading the people by alleging the bridge collapsed because the PAP fighters ran on it.