i'm pleased to have evan osnos back at this table. welcome. >> thanks, charlie. >> rose: tell us about this railway disaster and what it says. >> this was a train crash last summer that turned out to be more than trains. what happened was quite simple on its face. there were two trains going down a track on the southeastern city of when jo and they collided with each other. and we found out it was because there was a broken signal that failed in the thunderstorm and one train didn't know where the other train was. we've learned that in fact it was something much broader which was that this was ultimately a failure of a system. this was a failure to be careful about safety. it was a failure to make sure money was going to where it was supposed to go in engineering and ultimately it was a failure of political design because this thing was designed to be a political symbol, they moved too fast, they went too far and as a result there was a tragedy. >> rose: there was a rush program to get all this high speed rail completed before the con

. >> rose: evan osnos and anouk aimee when we continue. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: next month, the chinese government will undergo its most important leadership transition in recent history. the event has raised questions about the country's political future. even osnos is a long time observer of china. in this week's new yorker magazine he writes about how the pail your of the country's railway industry reveals a dark side of chinese growth. it's called "boss rail: the disaster exposed the underside of the boom." i'm pleased to have evan osnos welcome. >> thanks, charlie. >> rose: tell us about this railway disaster and what it says. >> this was a train crash last summer at turnene o o to b b more than trains. what happened was quite simple on its face. there were two trains going down a track on the southeastern city of when jo and they collided and we found out it was because there was a broken signal that failed in the thunderstorm and on train didn't kn

i'll talk to "the new yorker's" beijing reporter evan osnos about the political tumult in china ahead of the upcoming anointment. also i'll talk to the education innovator sal khan, the founder of khan academy about how best to teach our kids. >>> and what does a company with almost 700 planes and tens of thousands of trucks worry about? fuel. i'll sit down with fedex ceo fred smith to talk about the future of energy. that crucial subject, the future of energy, is also at the heart of our latest gps special, which airs tonight at 8:00 and 11:00 p.m. eastern and pacific. in "global lessons: the roadmap for powering america" will take you around the world to bring you ideas about energy back home. >>> but first here's my take. the second presidential debate has been studied and analyzed mostly as a prize fight. who punched hard, who missed a swing. that's fine. but there was a substantive aspect to the debate as well. president obama actually showed up this time, and he was engaged and articulate, as was governor romney. as a result, we got a sense of the issues, and there is an importa

i have a guest with me, evan osnos. welcome. >> glad to be here. this is an skploord moment.een there for seven years and i never felt it. this is a moment of acute anxiety for the leadership and alsz for regular people. it's anxious for the leadership because they realize the people they put in now are going to be confronting a range of issues that frankly are more difficult than anything they've faced over the last several years. for the people on the street the anxiety is they frankly doan know very much about the people who are going to be running they're country. what they know is it's a fwrun of men, seven. china doesn't have a leader. the first among leaders. among them will be xi js jinping. they have some exposure abroad. most importantly perhaps they've all succeeded within the system. they're men who have thrived within the communist party and they're going to do what they can to maintain the status quo and do with as little as they can probably get away with. >> let's talk about the strength. there were three planks to that. the first was economic reform. market e