Illustration: Liu Rui

The whole country realizes that the High Speed Train (HST) accident represents a critical juncture in China's development. HSTs are a pre-eminent sign of modernization, as the infrastructure required, the technical skills needed and the financial cost involved are normally only found in developed countries. To have such a serious multi-fatality accident so early in the development of the system threatens the very viability of the whole program of HSTs.

International observers and the Chinese public alike are watching to see how the government responds and how openly this disaster is dealt with. This is not just the country's netizens but every rail passenger of the present and future, every manager in high risk industries and every family member of the injured who will demand proper compensation.

I believe that China needs to begin with the analysis made by the former Minister of the State Administration of Work Safety, Li Yizhong, a few years ago. 

He had calculated that China was in the middle of its "accident-prone" period, through which the UK, Germany, the US and Japan had passed in turn. Each of these periods was shorter for that country than the one country before it and he asked the question, "How short can we make our accident-prone period?"

China has shown the world that it can deal with natural calamities, like the Wenchuan earthquake, and very bad industrial accidents like the Wangjialing mine flooding last year, very effectively. The country has very well organized rescue services and a determination on the part of the top leadership to "save the day" by recovering as many people as possible. Excellent as this may be, the risk assessment and prevention strategies followed are still weak, especially in the high risk industries.

The State Council itself recognized this when last July it published a set of detailed instructions for high risk industries. These required all plants and mines in these industries to carry out monthly risk assessments, not just risk assessments for new projects. They are required to do other critical work as well. The railways should now be included.

In China's accident-prone coal industry, such policies have already had an impact, with official fatal accident rates coming down from a very high 6,995 in 2002 to below a projected 2,400 this year. This, while coal output has increased over that period threefold, is an 80 percent reduction in the death rate.  There is still a long way to go for the industry as a whole but some modern mines are now as good as their international counterparts.

The cost of prevention of accidents is much cheaper, too, than the final cost of disaster. For example, in Australia one mining fatality can cost a coal company between A$3-10 million ($3.3-11 million), made up from a compensation claim of $750,000, a fine of $300,000 to 1,300,000 in addition to lost production. In New Zealand, the Pike River mine explosion last November, which killed 29 miners, has already cost $11 million in recovery attempts, will cost over $8 million for the public inquiry, tens of millions to support the families of the victims and will cost over $100 million to recover the mine, if that is possible.

China does not yet have a unified compensation and rehabilitation system. Much is left to local government. Provincial governments have begun to act, as did Shanxi over coal mine fatalities in 2005 when it raised compensation for families to 200,000 yuan ($31,020).

In many developed countries, compensation is largely determined by the courts, as victims and their families sue the responsible operator. This can lead to massive payments, as in the US.

A better way is to adopt a no-fault system, as we did in my country, New Zealand, in 1974. All accident victims receive loss of income payments and a lump sum goes to the families if someone is killed - at work, on the roads or on a mountain. Some might think that such a scheme would be too expensive for China, yet in New Zealand it has been shown to be both cheaper and fairer than the litigation system it replaced.

The author is a coal mine safety adviser and Friendship Prize winner in 2009 for his work on coal mine safety. opninion@globaltimes.com.cn