This point of view makes a lot of sense.
Considering that China now has more high-speed train track kilometers than the rest of the world combined, one early teething derailment is actually a pretty good safety record, considering 50 years ago Chinese trains were notoriously slow and more dangerous back then. They do overspend on less economically feasible high speed routes, for prestige reasons as well as their own version of the Big Move problem -- there's just not enough space for freeways and airports to move everyone, and they are forced to go high speed to move more people using a minimum amount of space. A pair of tracks easily move more people than a clogged 8 lane freeway, and they had a 100 kilometer gridlock that lasted 9 days nonstop --
China National Highway 110 Traffic Jam.
Both the European high speed train disaster (Spain) and the Chinese high speed train disaster, each killed 40 people. Also, India's train networks kill far more people per capita than China's modern high speed train network. It may not be as safe as Japan's statistically speaking, but it is really high safety, right up there, even safer than VIA's death rate! We may not always like the Chinese taking over our jobs and such, but credit where credit is due -- it's safer to ride a Chinese high speed train than a VIA train, when you look at death rates. They run a really INCREDIBLE number of high speed train now. China high speed trains now move more people
DAILY than VIA moves over SIX MONTHS... Just merely only counting the sole VIA derailment not long ago in Burlington that killed a few Canadian onboard the VIA train, still means (despite China's one big disaster killing 40) China's high speed network kills less passengers than VIA's train network. By about two orders of magnitude, when comparing the deaths per passenger ride statistic! The statistic gets even huger (three+ orders of magnitude) when it's
deaths per passenger kilometer! (Since the average China HSR ride is far longer distance than the average VIA ride)
The statistics amazed me. So yes, I agree -- China's high speed train network is apparently massively safer than VIA -- by a few orders of magnitude.
Even if not as safe as Japan's current perfect record (zero on-board Shinkansen accident deaths)