China: Are Overloaded Vehicles to Blame for Harbin Bridge Collapse? · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

On August 24, 2012, a highway bridge in Harbin city in China's Heilongjiang province suddenly collapsed, leaving three dead and five injured. Yesterday the investigation report came out which stated that the collapse was caused by overloaded vehicles.
It seems that no one believes in the so-called expert report, but first of all, let's take a look at the video taken by citizen eyewitnesses soon after the bridge collapsed:
http://youtu.be/hpoblLaNIuo
Local media outlets pointed out that in the past ten years there have been more than 85 news reports [zh] about collapsed bridges. Some netizens have pointed out that this fact is related to corruption in the construction tendering process.
Truth digger's micro-blog post [zh] about construction tenders has been re-posted more than 21,600 times in 3 weeks:
【不垮是奇迹】大桥由国家投资18亿公开招标，中标的不会建桥，也没能力建桥，以15亿转包；承包的也不会建桥，以12亿转包；转承包的也不会建桥，以10亿转包；承包的有能力建桥，可是10亿不够啊，于是拿1亿来贿赂工程监理，1亿收买验收部门，7亿来建桥，赚1亿。桥不垮，诞生一个人类建筑史上的奇迹。
[It would be a miracle if the bridge did not collapse] Let's say the central government invests RMB 1.8 billion [approximately USD 1.2 billion] for bridge construction. The company that wins the tender does not know how to build the bridge and contracts it out with a RMB 1.5 billion bid to a sub-contractor; the sub-contractor does not know how to build the bridge and contracts it out again with a RMB 1 billion bid. Finally the sub-sub-contractor knows how to build the bridge but RMB 1 billion is not enough. So it spends RMB 0.1 billion to bribe the quality control officials, another 0.1 billion to bribe the quality verification department. Eventually it spends 0.7 billion on building the bridge while making 0.1 billion profit. If the bridge remains sound and safe, this would be a architectural miracle in human history.
Without addressing the real problem, even the official media outlet People Daily questioned [zh] the so-called expert report in its micro-blog comment:
【微评论：事故调查要回应“百姓常识”】同样是超载，为何轮胎和车架没事儿，桥却塌了；同样是大桥，为何卢沟桥承重430吨，哈尔滨高架桥却无法承受420吨？群众的常识或许未必科学，但既然是调查通报，既然为了惩前毖后，就要回应常识，而非自说自话，笼统给出“各项指标均符合设计要求”的结论。
[Micro comment: The investigation should answer to people's common sense] If it is overloading, how come the tyres and the bodies of the vehicles remained intact while the bridge collapsed. How come Macro-Polo bridge could support up to 430 tons of weight while the Harbin bridge could not support 420 tons of weight? People's common sense may not be scientific. But if the investigative report is to prevent future disasters from happening, it has to address people's questions rather than putting the investigation in abstract terms like “all indications showed that the construction is up to standard requirement of the design”.
More than 1,400 micro-bloggers joined the discussion on the People's Daily's comment thread:
木木山风oliver：就算我缺乏常识都能看出来问题, 专家是被”招安”了的, 连说句真话都不敢?
oliver: Even though I am not very knowledgable, I can still see the problem. The experts have surrendered and dare not to speak the truth.
小白杨514341：几辆车造成的超载，假如不超载但是塞车呢？？？几百辆车。。。不敢想象
514341: A few vehicles had resulted in the overloading. What if in the case of traffic jam when there are hundreds of vehicles on the bridge at the same time… what would have happened?
rocky的小围脖￼：笑话！既然“各项指标均符合设计要求”,而现在桥又塌了，那就应该追究设计单位的责任！调查组并不缺少专业知识，缺少的是直面问题的勇气！
rocky: This is a joke! If it is really the fact that “all indications showed that the construction is up to standard requirement of the design”, now that the bridge collapsed, the responsibility should lie with the design unit. The investigation team has so many experts in it, but they lack the courage to speak the truth.
韩飞1985sunshine：现在是怎么回事？桥塌了怪车，车坏了怪路不好？政府部门吃屎的？为何处这种结论？当人民群众是傻子？
1985sunshine: What happen to our country? Blame the vehicles for the collapsed bridge? So if the vehicles broke down, should we blame the road? The government department are good for nothing? How can they accept this kind of conclusion? They see people as idiots?
小黄的树洞：把责任全推给死者，受害车辆变成肇事车辆，他的桥倒是无瑕可寻，无耻无下限。
Tree cave: Blaming the dead ones for the incidents, the victims have become the trouble bearers. There is nothing wrong with the perfect bridge, what can be more shameless than such conclusion?
一塌糊涂两眼泪：由此可见！反对贪腐比所谓爱国保岛更重要！否则，人民将无一寸土地，无任何权利！
shedding: Now we can see anti-corruption is more important than the protect Diaoyu Island act [refering to tension between China and Japan over the disputed Diaoyu Islands]. Or else people won't have any rights in our homeland.
纵横四海6263：派100辆超载车去日本，破坏他们的交通体系
Four seas 6263: Let's send 100 vehicles to Japan and collapse their transportation systems.