It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town

Start at the start:

Last Saturday’s Boston Herald featured this front page:

The story inside (as the hardreading staff noted at the time):

Activists want T bid derailed

Human rights and labor activists are voicing outrage that the Patrick administration could soon award a staggering $1.3 billion subway contract to a rail enterprise owned by the repressive Communist Chinese government, saying the deal would be a “terrible disgrace.”

“If the left-leaning Massachusetts blue staters love to boycott things that break the wrong way on issues of rights, why does China get a pass on all of that?” said Tom Cushman, a human rights activist and professor at Wellesley College.

“If this were an entity that was known to be hostile toward transgendered people or gay people or who violated the rights of minorities, people would be up in arms over a contract like this. But (they) do all those things. They are hostile toward all those people, but China doesn’t register on the screen of the morally outraged.”

 

Now comes the Boston Globe with this front page piece in yesterday’s edition.

T job’s top bid is from China

Subway car plan draws concerns on human rights

A railcar and locomotive manufacturer controlled by China’s government has emerged as the top bidder for a $566.6 million contract to supply the MBTA with new cars for the Red and Orange lines.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation board of directors is scheduled to vote Wednesday on the contract for CNR MA Corporation, which is a venture of China CNR Corporation Limited and CNR Changchun Railway Vehicles Co., according to the board’s agenda.

The contract for 284 subway cars will include the construction of an assembly plant in Springfield, according to a person with knowledge of the contract. The MBTA said last year it expected to begin delivering Orange Line cars in the winter of 2018, and the Red Line cars in the fall of 2019.

 

The Globe piece has a number of new details, but nowhere does it credit the Herald for catching this train first.

Bad form, Globeniks. Bad form.

Money and the People’s Republic get front-page headlines in today’s local dailies. Start with this colorful one in the Boston Herald.

Nice. The story inside:

Activists want T bid derailed

Human rights and labor activists are voicing outrage that the Patrick administration could soon award a staggering $1.3 billion subway contract to a rail enterprise owned by the repressive Communist Chinese government, saying the deal would be a “terrible disgrace.”

“If the left-leaning Massachusetts blue staters love to boycott things that break the wrong way on issues of rights, why does China get a pass on all of that?” said Tom Cushman, a human rights activist and professor at Wellesley College.

“If this were an entity that was known to be hostile toward transgendered people or gay people or who violated the rights of minorities, people would be up in arms over a contract like this. But (they) do all those things. They are hostile toward all those people, but China doesn’t register on the screen of the morally outraged.”

Well, it does at the railsy local tabloid.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, it’s an entirely different business on Page One.

MGH in talks for hospital in China

Massachusetts General Hospital is in early discussions with two partners to build a full-service hospital with 500 to 1,000 beds in China, a country that is struggling to meet growing demand from its 1.4 billion citizens for top-quality medical care.

Mass. General signed a “framework agreement’’ last week with a Chinese hospital that specializes in traditional medicine and a Chinese investment firm, allowing the three parties to exchange financial information and work on developing a definitive agreement to open a facility in an island city close to Hong Kong.

Mass. General executives called the talks preliminary and said they have not made a final decision about whether to participate in the project, but that they hope to do so by next summer.

So both these deals are still up in the air. Plenty of opportunity for the Chinese checkers to do their damnedest.