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China rail ministry sacks spokesman after deadly crash

by Reuters
Tuesday, 16 August 2011 12:02 GMT

BEIJING, Aug 16 (Reuters) - China's scandal-plagued Ministry of Railways sacked its spokesman on Tuesday, state media said, as it tries to clean up its image after a rail crash in July killed 40 people.

Wang Yongping is the latest official to be fired after the crash between two high-speed trains near Wenzhou in eastern Zhejiang province which raised new questions about the safety of the fast-growing rail network.

"China's Ministry of Railways ... decided to dismiss the ministry's spokesman, Wang Yongping, from office," the official Xinhua news agency said in a one-sentence story without further details.

Seeking to assuage public anger, the government fired three middle-level railway officials a day after the crash.

Wang was at the centre of outrage focused on the ministry in the wake of the accident. Chinese journalists had chased after him after he tried to slip away following a 45-minute briefing on the accident, demanding he answer more questions.

China's central propaganda department issued directives to media a day after the crash, calling for themes of love in the face of tragedy and a ban on hard questions.

But those early attempts to muzzle news about the crash backfired, exposing the ministry to public ridicule on the Internet and outspoken media coverage.

China's State Council, or Cabinet, has since called for safety checks on the nation's rail network and a halt to all new rail project approvals.

In a separate Xinhua article on Tuesday, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang, who visited the site of the crash but struggled to quell public anger, said the safety checks should boost public confidence and satisfaction with the government.

"The Wenzhou disaster once again reminds us that we must persist in making safety our first objective in rail development," he said.

China's second-biggest train maker, China CNR Corp Ltd , said last Friday it would recall 54 bullet trains used on the new showcase Beijing-Shanghai line for safety reasons. .

Even before last month's crash and resulting furore, China's railways sector was under a cloud. The railways minister, Liu Zhijun, a key figure behind the boom in the sector, was dismissed in February over corruption charges that have not yet been tried in court. (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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