China's recent embarrassments surrounding its domestic high speed trains have taken a turn for the macabre, as two of their ultra-modern bullet trains collided on the Beijing-Fuzhou line in Wenzhou. The current official death toll is 35, with more than 200 injured.

Despite the adage that lightning never strikes the same place twice, it has apparently been striking Chinese bullet  trains so frequently in the past month that the only viable explanation is a condemnation from the heavens itself; either that, or the Railway Ministry's excuse of “lightning” is becoming code for, “it's none of your damn business why our supposedly state-of-the-art trains stop working for hours at a time.”

The New York Times also reports, disturbingly, that:

Photos on the popular Weibo microblogging service showed backhoes burying the wrecked train near the site. Critics said the wreckage needed to be carefully examined for causes of the malfunction, but the railway ministry said that the trains contain valuable national technology and could not be left in the open in case it fell into the wrong hands.

Given the allegations that the domestically developed trains were based largely on technology stolen from foreign companies, the government's enthusiasm for burying the evidence could just be to avoid the embarrassment of publicizing its intellectual property violations. But that seems dubious, given their flagrant disregard for the contractual conditions under which they have acquired other technology for their air force and navy from former Soviet nations.

But given the conflicting stories about why and how this fatal malfunction occurred, it is far more likely that the government wants to hide the fact that these accidents are the result of its own incompetence and corruption. The People's Republic is again demonstrating that saving face is more important than saving lives.

Christopher Michael Luna is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist