China's bullet train was supposed to signal its arrival as a high-tech leader. Instead, a crash that killed at least 40 people has made it a lightning rod for anger at the human cost of recklessly fast development. On the Internet and in normally docile state media, the July 23 disaster triggered outrage about China's drumbeat of deaths from bridge and schoolhouse collapses, coal mine explosions, tainted milk and other disasters. “I can't tell whether the current society is moving forward or backward. If it's moving forward, why does it have to be paid for in lives?” said a comment on the popular Sina.com microblog site, signed Countryman Shen Xiaobao. The crash is especially sensitive for communist leaders because it hurt members of China's urban middle class, who are among the chief beneficiaries of the booming economy and an important base of support for the Communist Party's continued monopoly on power. The bullet train, based on German and Japanese systems, is one facet of far-reaching government technology ambitions that call for developing a civilian jetliner, a Chinese mobile phone standard and advances in areas from nuclear power to genetics.
