Left Flank

I should be grateful I didn't have to wait in frigid, socked in stations waiting for a train, as millions of Chinese people had to endure during their one annual opportunity over the Lunar New Year holiday to see far-flung relatives. Were all the delays merely the result of the snowstorms, an "act of God"?

For a government that bases its claim to legitimacy on its competence and ability to guarantee the supply of basic necessities, all of this might seem threatening. Yet like many others, Mr Liu blames what he calls «the worst weather in decades», rather than the authorities.

Not everyone is happy to leave it at that. The disgruntled probably include the millions still suffering from shortages of power and water, and those who have reluctantly heeded the government's call to scrap their cherished holiday visit home.

Government leaders have dispatched army and police forces to keep order and work crews to get things moving again. They have also gone out of their way to express concern and, in the familiar ringing idiom of martial mass-mobilisation propaganda, show they have taken charge. Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, visited stations in three provinces, offering sympathy and vague apologies for unspecified failures. President Hu Jintao went down a coalmine to inspire miners to step up their output. On February 2nd Wu Yi, a deputy prime minister, popped up at Nanchang station, urging local officials to «be fully aware of the arduousness and gravity of the snow-havoc battle».

According to Fang Xiu'an, of the China Coal Transport and Distribution Association, which handles marketing for coal producers, the authorities deserve high marks for responding to the crisis. They worked quickly to increase coal production, to give deliveries of coal priority over other cargoes, and to start fixing transport and power disruptions.

But he also faults bureaucrats in the coal and power industries. Power plants that normally stock 18-20 days' worth of coal had in some cases run their reserves down to as little as three days' worth. Planners, says Mr Fang, should have been more alert to warning signs that these dangerously low stockpiles made China vulnerable. The causes of the supply crunch are clear enough. Since 2005 the government has ordered thousands of unsafe and poorly managed coalmines to shut down, reducing production. Lower output, together with unusually cold weather, forced up prices. From December to January, the price of premium coal rose by 13%, from 575 yuan a tonne to 650 yuan. But electricity prices are fixed, and, unable to pass on costs, power producers had been waiting for seasonal price cuts in March before stocking up.

Equally clear is the reasoning behind these policies. Rising inflation has unnerved citizens and officials alike, and power-price controls are one way to stem it. Lax mining standards, meanwhile, have led to a gruesome string of coalmine accidents and a scandalous yearly toll of thousands of dead miners. The government has justifiably been under pressure to act.

At least, President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao acted like leaders, visiting coal mines and angry travellers. But, Again, there is a very real policy failure these leaders need to tackle.

Despite their professions of concern, however, Mr Wen and Mr Hu have done little in concrete policy terms to make them count. And there are some ways in which policy failures have indeed exacerbated the weather-induced agony. The first is the inadequacy of disaster-response mechanisms, and the poor co-ordination between the various government departments involved. Second is the refusal to tackle a basic structural problem: that China is a country with hundreds of millions of migrant workers, most of whom are separated from their families, who all take their holidays at exactly the same time. A reform to holiday entitlements is belatedly under way. Residency rules that force families apart also need reviewing.

Thirdly, at least one aspect of the latest crisis was both foreseeable and in part a direct result of government policy: the electricity shortages, which afflicted tens of millions and worsened the transport bottlenecks. A flawed reform had freed fuel prices but left power-producers unable to pass on the rising cost of coal to consumers, because electricity prices are fixed. Many producers responded by letting their stocks fall to dangerously low levels, in the hope prices would fall when the weather warms up in the spring.

Gordon G. Chang offers the New Year snowstorms as another reason the PRC needs a "…more open economy." Before that, China needs two politicians who can do better than just make house calls.