Although Chinese reporters raced to the scene, none of the major state-run newspapers even mentioned the story on their Sunday front pages. A user of Sina Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, first broke the story and increasingly popular social media outlets then provided millions of Chinese with the fastest information and pictures as well as the most poignant and scathing commentaries.
By the time the railway ministry held its first press conference more than 24 hours after the collision, the public had seen not just reports of passengers trapped inside dark trains or images of a mangled car dangling off the bridge -- but also bulldozers crushing mangled cars that had fallen to the ground and burying the wreckage on site.
"How can we cover up an accident that the whole world already knew about?" said a defiant railway ministry spokesman Wang Yongping. "They told me they buried the car to facilitate the rescue effort -- and I believe this explanation."
Wang was terse when reporters asked him to explain the fact that a toddler girl was being pulled out of the wreckage alive 20 hours after the accident -- and long after authorities declared no more signs of life in the trains.
"That was a miracle," he said.
Blaming lightning strike-triggered equipment failure as the cause of the accident based on preliminary investigation, Wang put on a brave face on the safety of China's controversial high-speed rail.
"Chinese technologies are advanced and we are still confident about that," he said.
While some state media echoed Wang's sentiment, many netizens questioned his every statement from the death toll to the cause and called him the face of a ministry mired in allegations of corruption and ineptitude.
"This land is a hotbed for the world's most sprawling bureaucracy and most cold-blooded officials," user "chenjie" wrote on Sina Weibo.
