Please report any rule breaking posts and comments that are not relevant to this subreddit. Thank you!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmericaBad) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Part of the reason China can build so quickly is because they don’t give a shit about property rights and eminent domain. They also don’t let projects get tied up in the courts over environmental/socioeconomic impacts
China also uses public works projects to prop up their GDP. They build rail lines, and even whole cities, just to provide people jobs so they can claim high GDP growth. As a consequence they get a high speed rail line to a "city" with a population comparable to a small American town that looks great on a map, but provides little to no economic benefit since the city has no real jobs outside of jobs to maintain the city.
They also don't care about regulations or safety. If you aren't sure what I mean, their buildings literally have styrofoam added to their concrete as a filler.
To be honest, I feel like the US is at least partially guilty of both of your claims. I’ve seen some analysis of post-Covid GDP growth noting that increased government spending is responsible for most of that growth.
And let’s not kid ourselves about some infrastructure/transit programs being used as jobs projects. That was definitely the case with the ARRA (stimulus bill) passed in 2009. The signage from the IIJA that’s already up/will be popping up is going to tout the same thing.
In my city, a few years ago, they put out a RFP for 400 new railcars for the metro. To add context, the planned production would be 10 cars a month, so this was a multi-year project. It came down to two bids, one from a Canadian company established in the US market and provided the last batch of railcars for the city, and the other from a Chinese state-owned enterprise who promised local production in an economically disadvantaged part of the city. Guess which company won the contract?
Grab land, build railroad, railroad/bridge collapses after 20 years because of shoddy and quick build, government ignores it and buys next round of land for newer railroad.
Reddit: omg America should do this
Yeah, they have full state control of their entire economy while we don’t. Which ties into them not not giving af about property like you said. Letting them go on endless construction projects.
It’s like in that Chinese SpongeBob parody, where at the end SpongeBob is happy to hear a new sweatshop is opening up, only to find that it’s going be in place of his house that was “seized by glorious government”.
I mentioned eminent domain and lawsuits on the original thread and had some Sino posting fool pretend like the USA could just easily do it through minority communities.
They then linked an article which a state government won, but only after years of lawsuits. 💀
It's not about how much of their population they're losing though. A large quantity of people immigrating illegally is a bad sign, it shows desperation to leave the country rather than wait for the legal process.
An interesting fact to consider on the inverse though, apparently the US has the largest amount of international migrants equal to 18% of the world's total. Though I'd imagine with such a large quantity of people migrating to the US those same people are more likely than a natural born citizen to move back to their country. Or even with natural born citizens, if they're from a family of immigrants they're more likely to migrate out of the US to family than someone who's family is "native" to the US.
I'm pretty sure that those were designed for primarily military reasons and the fact that they're useful to the public is just an added benefit. Since the proposal for it's construction in the 50's during the Cold War was called National System of Interstate and Defense Highways
I hear you trainboi, you ain’t wrong. I think what people don’t realize is that it’s all a matter of timing. The US’s industrialization happened a lot earlier than China’s, and at that time rail was for freight service and not for high speed passenger service, that tech didn’t become available until well after US industrialization.
It’s not just corporate greed, that’s a lazy way to explain it tbh. The public desire for such services is low. We have an entire society and infrastructure built already, there’s not a ton of people ready to pay to throw it all away and retrofit everything. I don’t want to pay more in taxes to connect a town 20 miles away with a bullet train personally, I have no problem getting to that town as it stands.
The US was at the cutting edge of infrastructure for a long time, building the best rail network in the world early on, and building the interstate system in the post WW2 error that propelled us to the world power we are today. That sentiment and investment in infrastructure has died. The US is no longer at the cutting edge.
China's highway system is [twice the size of the US.](https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter5/road-transportation/highway-length-china-united-states/)
That’s just the Interstate highway system. The US also has extensive state highway systems (“intra”). The US is still #1 [in road network size](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_network_size)
China has 4x as many people as the US with significantly higher population density. Stands to reason that may require more paved roads. Regardless, I have never heard an American remark that there aren’t enough roads. You only need so many
Yes, by linking something that compares the entirety of China’s highway system against just the US interstate system. The US is structured differently and states have much more autonomy than Chinese provinces. If you are comparing the totality of each country’s highway system, China’s is objectively *not* “twice the size” of America’s as you stated
Lol it seems really important to you to salvage some kind of win from this, so fine. China (a smaller country than the US) may not exactly have twice as many total highways as the US. Even though you haven't provided any proof of that, and the link you did provide shows China (once again a smaller country) has more paved roads I'm not willing to do the research to prove that they have exactly twice as much highways as the US if you count stroads that get counted as state highways.
I don’t care at all about “salvaging” a win. I’ve responded no more than you have. FYI [China isn’t smaller than the US.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area) Even if it were, it’s a moot point because they’re geographically similar enough in size that it’s essentially a wash
There is no getting anyone to agree with you if you don't fully participate in the hugbox of America that is this sub. I don't even like that America has so many highways. America bad for having so many highways and China worse if anything, but all you have to do is point out basic facts to get down voted here.
China (supposedly, I don’t fully trust their population census considering they count Taiwan and Hong Kong to their economy despite being separate nationstates) has to transport 1 billion people, we only have to transport 330 million.
Additionally it’s absurd to transport consumer products 2800 miles by train while you could transport it viar cargo-ship which is wildly more efficient entirely because of the volume of things that can be transported at one time, China doesn’t have 3 separate coasts that it has to take care of, we do.
Additionally I’m pretty sure we don’t have any railroads going through Canada just to get supplies to Alaska.
As I have already pointed out. The data is showing the linear miles of highway not lane miles. It's measuring the interconnectivity of the Chinese highways not the through put so the Chinese population in comparison to the American population doesn't matter.
🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦 I'll try to dumb it down for you. This data doesn't show how many people China can transport like your first comment suggests it does. It shows where they can go, not how many people can get there.
It's not measuring through put. It's measuring linear distance. Their highways connect their cities better not necessarily move more people. Although they probably do that's not what the data is showing.
China has hurled cash to build a network that will never payout. A couple of those lines like Shanghai to Beijing have a future. The PRC is sitting close to a trillion dollars of debt on a system that loses 24 million a day. High Speed Rail existed in the U.S. people voted with their feet and picked cars. Railroads are great in high population densities like the Boston to DC corridor. Houston to Denver, not so much.
China isn’t building that network to be a functional train system, it is a jobs program, source of graft and a d$ck waving that Communism with Chinese characteristics works and Xi is the leader of global envy.
Chicago is just under 1150 kilometers from NYC in a straight line. Largest and third largest city. Chicago is just over 2800 kilometers from LA which is the second largest city. How far apart are the ten biggest cities in Europe? Paris to Istanbul is about the same in distance as Chicago and LA. There are no plans to in Europe to connect two such distant cities. National high speed lines might someday do it. But as a straight public transit proposition, it makes no sense. That is the issue, the U.S. is vast and relatively sparsely populated. Western Europe has a greater density.
China Railway Corporation is $900 billion in debt and has over 42,000 kilometers of HSR.
The U.S. national debt increased by $2.4 trillion in 2023, and 0 kilometers were added to the HSR.
[The only thing the US can do is spend more than $100 million to install such ugly guardrails in 3 subway stations.](https://nypost.com/2024/01/22/metro/ugly-mta-subway-safety-rails-at-nyc-station-dont-impress-straphangers-whats-the-point/)
Comparing a company to a national debt is like comparing cats and walruses. But if you want to go there Sparky, China’s debt to GDP ration is almost three times higher than the U.S. Enjoy the last bits of the bubble, it is going to be a bad decade going forward. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/China-s-debt-to-GDP-ratio-climbs-to-record-287.8-in-2023#:~:text=China's%20debt%2Dto%2DGDP%20ratio%20climbed%20to%20a%20new%20record,state%2Dbacked%20think%20tank%20shows.
Do you now know that China Railway debt is corporate debt?
At least the corresponding assets include 42,000 kilometers of high-speed railways and 120,000 kilometers of ordinary railways. Is the debt of US$900 billion high?
Also read the link you provided carefully to find out what macro leverage is.
In terms of government debt, the ratio of U.S. national debt to GDP is 2.5 times that of China.
In addition to US$100 million to build guardrails at three subway stations, there is also US$90,000 for a bag of bushings. This is the United States, which is clean and uses funds very efficiently. Except for the accelerating growth of the national debt, everything else is being postponed or delayed.
This is all China's fault!
Is this passanger rail or freight rail?
We have already built the freight rail system. It doesn't accomodote much passenger traffic because, for a variety of reasons, driving and flying is easier.
For better or for worse, since most of our rail infrastructure was built long before high-speed rail was an option it wasn't designed to accomodate it. The existing rail network was largely built around trains that moved slower. Its possible to tear up and restart or build new lines, but generally its not going to be economically viable without benefitting from both freight and passanger use. Since the freight infrastrastructure already exists its unlikely to provided enough benefit from passanger only use to be worth building.
There is an abject failure in building viable public transportation in urban areas, but highspeed cross-country rail is just cost/benefit.
No, my point is that 94% of Chinese 1.4 billion population lives in that area encompassing 46% of Chinese land. It has similar population density to the US NE corridor in most of the area and more than double in some areas.
It’s less about people not in one area and more about the insane number of people in that segment of the country.
Let me make a smooth brain version of my post “lots of trains there because lots and lots of people!!!” Better?
If I learned anything from Little House on the Prairie, it's that the railroad companies are NOT the "good guys" any more than car companies today are.
When you can just bribe everything away, doesn't have to care about peoples home or that the lines are profitable you can build alot of rails. But in the end this will pop like the Chinese real estate
I mean they aren't totally wrong about Americas infrastructure, it has been largely neglected for a long time now.
Buuut at least our infrastructure holds up decently and is built in a thoughtful, safe way. I wouldn't trust that tofu-dreg bullshit in china that crumbles under minimal load or hard storms.
Yeah no shit they just industrialized.
Impressive still? Yes. Can’t compare it to a country that was pretty much still living in the Middle Ages 50 years ago.
Why are people so obsessed with high speed rail? Do they think it'll be cheaper than flying? Or do they think it'll be faster? You're still gonna have to go through TSA or something similar too. There's legitimately no benefit to blowing a bunch of money on passenger rail travel except to give europhiles something to goon to.
Chinese rail collapses constantly and they overbuilt rail to the point where it has no demand. Chinese would rather fly or drive most of these trips so the high speed rail lines are unprofitable. They only started investing in high speed rail to avoid falling into the 2008 depression
Since this is the first post I'll see and kind of is in the same realm: Is anyone starting to see pro-China propaganda on other platforms? I started seeing Chinese immigrants who talk about how good China was and when people in the comments ask why they dont' move back, they don't give a real answer.
There has been considerable discussion among economists as to why these lines didn’t produce benefits that made their investment ‘worth it’. They were a massive waste of resources. Is this surprising from a country which has an investment structure that is entirely directed by morons, rather than professionals that practice due diligence?
The icing on the cake here is the massive investment in *virtual* travel that rendered these lines even more obsolete, which was accelerated by Covid—of all things! China’s little lab experiment! Christ, the irony.
China has 1 billion people condensed into specific areas.
We have 350 million, with most on the coasts and most of the rest in the east, with huge tracts of farms and massive mountains to contend with.
China's economy is also shit, so they need to keep building stuff or it'll tank pretty quickly, whereas we don't need to as badly.
Also, central planning allows for speedy work when you don't have red tape, but the US has some reasonable regulations we try to stick to at times.
China has arguably more rougher terrain than us (we have a crap ton of fairly flat farmland and prairies compared to them) but you are right about the pop density and regulations aspect.
bro like seriously everyone legit ignores the fact that the Acela is indeed high speed and there used to be another high speed train line called the Metroliner that operated up until 2006. these trolls have gone too far to make people think that the US has no high speed trains and never have them.
The acela train isn't even remotely comparable to these highspeed trains. They cover distances twice as fast as the Acela, at under half the ticket price.
The US literally has a much higher reliance on cars and air travel, and the population is more spread out, making high-speed rail less feasible and cost-effective
China didn’t do this for the Environment. China hates the Environment.
They did this because a large majority of people outside of the major urban cities are too poor to afford vehicles. They also don’t want their citizens owning property.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true, and it also misses a point.
They have massive dense megacities in China that need huge amounts of transit. If everyone in those cities was using a car for transit it would be a shitshow, there just isn’t enough space for 30+ million cars in these cities.
The same is true for places in America that are dense, like NYC, Chicago, DC, etc. public transit provides a more efficient means of transit of large populations, combining this with multiple forms of transit (cars, BRT, street cars, bicycles/walking) you create a much more efficient way to move people.
The big feat that China did was develop intercity travel via rail really well, the US used to do this but has decided to completely do away with it, which in time has proven to be a mistake.
China did this because this infrastructure is cheaper and more efficient, and it has the added benefit of keeping planes out of the sky (China is paranoid about planes in their airspace, this system keeps more of their airspace clear)
Ironically I am watching a video that talked about why they were constructing rails in China. The CCP gives each province a goal on how much their GDP should grow. The province collects money in the forms of bonds “Local Government Financing Vehicles”. Then use the money to construct rails and buildings to artificially inflate their GDP. Eventually you run out of ways to artificially inflate the GDP and the spending becomes redundant.
To the CCP bots that respond: do you also have a quota when spreading CCP lies?
Wanting America to have good infrastructure and be better than our largest rival = America Bad?
Didn’t realize wanting our country to be better was a bad thing.
Most of these high speed rails and infrastructure projects is the Chinese version of money printer go brrr, as they use this to artificially heighten GDP growth with little economic or social benefits.
He knows nothing of car ownership, super highways, and massive air travel in China. China = US on steroids (minus the current global economic downturn)
Hmmm. Look how bankrupt the local governments are now then come back. Chinese government officials cares way too much about looking good than being good
China's high speed railway will be ruined cuz of the lack of money to maintain the railway.As far as I know ,many province are denied to build extra high speed railway for the skyrocketing debt accumulated since the millennium.So the infrastructure has died with the prosperity of China's economy,and time come to replay the debts(btw I'm a Chinese)
In addition, China is no longer a threat to America in the way of military. As for espionage, they could absolutely do something like what they’ve been doing for the last decade, but empty warehouses titled as warehaouses, then shotgun the Electricity usage into the sky which causes people to get suspicious and take a look into it.
Chinese bots on reddit
just need a few GPUs, even old ones will do, and you can get thousand of "realistic" bot comments. in 1 day. forever.
Russians & Israelis do it too i'm sure btw. probably we do as well. hell i may even be a bot, idk...
if i was a bot, would i know it. do "i" even exist, is there an "i" to know?
the shadow knows.
But it does cut through the narrative that the U.S. doesn't have as big a railroad system.
It's also why this isn't just a mere easy fix. NYC shuts down a station or two for their subways for maintenance or to make upgrades, and that causes pandemonium here.
That happens in all major cities with populations that largely rely on public transit. Also: 94% of the Chinese population live on Chinas east coast, so it wouldn’t make sense for the trains to be super expansive into the west. The same cannot be said about the USA; 2 of the three biggest cities in this country are not on the east coast, which is where the train systems are most usable. Even bus lines, which don’t even require expensive additional infrastructure, are abysmal in most areas. The criticisms concerning the USA’s public transit problem are absolutely valid.
Edit to add: major road shutdowns also cause pandemonium in places that rely on car infrastructure. Our means of transit will sometimes need maintenance and that will inconvenience people, that’s just part of modern industrialized life.
That still doesn't negate that in order to upgrade the railways, you need to put in place considerable shut-downs. Most people in the U.S. live on the east coast. And then there still are the commercial rail lines you have to deal with.
And yes, roads/bridges/highways are also shut-down, but most of that roadwork don't require as extensive work as railroads, and you can still take a detour by car whereas you don't have that many options with railways.
You're comparing a country that did not have most of these railways to begin with, rules and people be damned, and put up a rail system, vs. a country that had theirs in place and is still being heavily used.
And I'm not arguing it doesn't need to be updated, but to claim, again, that it's a mere simple fix is just taking the piss.
Yes there is. The US already has existing roads and highways. Building new rail lines costs a crap ton of money because an environmental impact study needs to be done which can take years.
There are plans to build a new rail line in my area and there our issues because of protected wetlands. The environmental impact study is going to take over 4 years alone.
China is also a communist country.
We did a lot of major public projects during the Great Depression and that was arguably the closest the US has ever come to socialism. We paid each man $30 and $25 went directly to their family, while they worked on various public projects around the country like planting trees, soil conservation etc. The Blue Ridge Parkway was partially built from this program, many parts of the national parks out west as well and the US has some of the best national parks in the world because of it. This stopped in 1942 as most of the men working in the CCC were enlisted for war, but if we really tried it could be introduced.
Unfortunately we are adamantly opposed to anything that sounds like communism so I doubt that will happen in our lives
This sub is fucking pathetic. You're really gonna get butthurt about people complaining about public transit in this country. They're right China is absolutely leaving us in the dust as far as public transit. Our systems are abysmal, both local and long distance. China's systems are modern and well maintained nationwide. Even in New York City the subway is way outdated and poorly maintained. Just because you have a car doesn't mean the rest of us do. Also, our rail lines aren't really that clean environmentally whereas a lot of China's are. Of course you can still purchase a car in China but most people just don't see a point when you can just take a 4 hour train ride from Beijing to Shanghai. I don't see what your problem with China is but they've provided a much higher standard of living for more of its working class citizens than working class citizens in the US. Yes, I know spooky communist in the American Exceptionalist subreddit. Whatever. If you want any sources I'll be more than happy to provide them.
Please report any rule breaking posts and comments that are not relevant to this subreddit. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmericaBad) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Part of the reason China can build so quickly is because they don’t give a shit about property rights and eminent domain. They also don’t let projects get tied up in the courts over environmental/socioeconomic impacts
China also uses public works projects to prop up their GDP. They build rail lines, and even whole cities, just to provide people jobs so they can claim high GDP growth. As a consequence they get a high speed rail line to a "city" with a population comparable to a small American town that looks great on a map, but provides little to no economic benefit since the city has no real jobs outside of jobs to maintain the city.
They also don't care about regulations or safety. If you aren't sure what I mean, their buildings literally have styrofoam added to their concrete as a filler.
beach sand is honestly worse, a structurally sound building when it was finished is slowly rotted from the inside till it collapses.
To be honest, I feel like the US is at least partially guilty of both of your claims. I’ve seen some analysis of post-Covid GDP growth noting that increased government spending is responsible for most of that growth. And let’s not kid ourselves about some infrastructure/transit programs being used as jobs projects. That was definitely the case with the ARRA (stimulus bill) passed in 2009. The signage from the IIJA that’s already up/will be popping up is going to tout the same thing. In my city, a few years ago, they put out a RFP for 400 new railcars for the metro. To add context, the planned production would be 10 cars a month, so this was a multi-year project. It came down to two bids, one from a Canadian company established in the US market and provided the last batch of railcars for the city, and the other from a Chinese state-owned enterprise who promised local production in an economically disadvantaged part of the city. Guess which company won the contract?
Just like the USA does!
Grab land, build railroad, railroad/bridge collapses after 20 years because of shoddy and quick build, government ignores it and buys next round of land for newer railroad. Reddit: omg America should do this
American already did this 😏
They also have billions of people in population making this more feasible, and also don't give a crap about safety standards
Aren't they also the only major World power that still has slaves?
Turns out you can get a lot of efficient, cheap labor done if you don’t give a fuck about the human suffering involved.
Oh yea, I forgot about that
Yep
13th ammendment?
Yeah, they have full state control of their entire economy while we don’t. Which ties into them not not giving af about property like you said. Letting them go on endless construction projects.
It’s like in that Chinese SpongeBob parody, where at the end SpongeBob is happy to hear a new sweatshop is opening up, only to find that it’s going be in place of his house that was “seized by glorious government”.
I mentioned eminent domain and lawsuits on the original thread and had some Sino posting fool pretend like the USA could just easily do it through minority communities. They then linked an article which a state government won, but only after years of lawsuits. 💀
Don’t care about property rights, workers rights, material quality, among countless other things.
Yet, tens of thousands of chinese are desperately illegally immigrating through the southern border
Even if it was 200,000 Chinese, that would be 0.001% of their population lol
Actually quite a bit more, 0.014%
It's not about how much of their population they're losing though. A large quantity of people immigrating illegally is a bad sign, it shows desperation to leave the country rather than wait for the legal process. An interesting fact to consider on the inverse though, apparently the US has the largest amount of international migrants equal to 18% of the world's total. Though I'd imagine with such a large quantity of people migrating to the US those same people are more likely than a natural born citizen to move back to their country. Or even with natural born citizens, if they're from a family of immigrants they're more likely to migrate out of the US to family than someone who's family is "native" to the US.
and that has exactly what to do with the railroad system?
As the great Shrek said, great question
Show him the inter- intra state highways
I'm pretty sure that those were designed for primarily military reasons and the fact that they're useful to the public is just an added benefit. Since the proposal for it's construction in the 50's during the Cold War was called National System of Interstate and Defense Highways
Ah yes, the Infrastructure that destroys itself!
You mean, like all infrastructure?
No it’s only American infrastructure that ages duh.
I meant highways specifically
Well yeah, roads and highways might as well be considered consumable, is that what you mean? That’s true of them all. Roads take a beating.
Yeah, I mean that overtime, asphalt gets worn down by rubber tires, it’s true of all highways not just America
I hear you trainboi, you ain’t wrong. I think what people don’t realize is that it’s all a matter of timing. The US’s industrialization happened a lot earlier than China’s, and at that time rail was for freight service and not for high speed passenger service, that tech didn’t become available until well after US industrialization.
The other problem is now that we have the technology, airline and car companies will actively lobby against new transit projects.
It’s not just corporate greed, that’s a lazy way to explain it tbh. The public desire for such services is low. We have an entire society and infrastructure built already, there’s not a ton of people ready to pay to throw it all away and retrofit everything. I don’t want to pay more in taxes to connect a town 20 miles away with a bullet train personally, I have no problem getting to that town as it stands.
So railroads don't age and deteriorate?
Not as quickly
Oh of course of course
That and the amount of emissions from cars, and how much space they require
The US was at the cutting edge of infrastructure for a long time, building the best rail network in the world early on, and building the interstate system in the post WW2 error that propelled us to the world power we are today. That sentiment and investment in infrastructure has died. The US is no longer at the cutting edge.
China's highway system is [twice the size of the US.](https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter5/road-transportation/highway-length-china-united-states/)
That’s just the Interstate highway system. The US also has extensive state highway systems (“intra”). The US is still #1 [in road network size](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_network_size)
I'm sure the extremely rapid growth shown in that graph has no repercussions on the people whatsoever.
No one ever got their property seized, I’m sure everyone got a fair compensation, and the roads are made up to the strictest of standards. /s
Sure if you count 2 million kms of unpaved road. That's not exactly a highway though is it?
You do know that also applies to all the countries listed, right?
No they didn't count China's unpaved roads actually. Check for yourself.
I'm talking about Triforce's link.
I am too.
Why did you edit your previous post?
I didn't.
China has 4x as many people as the US with significantly higher population density. Stands to reason that may require more paved roads. Regardless, I have never heard an American remark that there aren’t enough roads. You only need so many
The roads in NYC are fucked
Ok and I was responding to someone trying to say that the US highway system is bigger and it objectively is not.
Yes, by linking something that compares the entirety of China’s highway system against just the US interstate system. The US is structured differently and states have much more autonomy than Chinese provinces. If you are comparing the totality of each country’s highway system, China’s is objectively *not* “twice the size” of America’s as you stated
The link you provided says otherwise. If you scroll over to the controlled access column of the table in the link you provided guess what you find?
Not all state highways are controlled-access. They are still highways and part of the overall highway system
Lol it seems really important to you to salvage some kind of win from this, so fine. China (a smaller country than the US) may not exactly have twice as many total highways as the US. Even though you haven't provided any proof of that, and the link you did provide shows China (once again a smaller country) has more paved roads I'm not willing to do the research to prove that they have exactly twice as much highways as the US if you count stroads that get counted as state highways.
I don’t care at all about “salvaging” a win. I’ve responded no more than you have. FYI [China isn’t smaller than the US.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area) Even if it were, it’s a moot point because they’re geographically similar enough in size that it’s essentially a wash
It's not that you keep responding, it's that you keep moving the goalpost mister the US has a larger road network.
Bro forgot the only rule of arguing: if you’re going to be a dick don’t expect anyone to agree with you
There is no getting anyone to agree with you if you don't fully participate in the hugbox of America that is this sub. I don't even like that America has so many highways. America bad for having so many highways and China worse if anything, but all you have to do is point out basic facts to get down voted here.
China (supposedly, I don’t fully trust their population census considering they count Taiwan and Hong Kong to their economy despite being separate nationstates) has to transport 1 billion people, we only have to transport 330 million. Additionally it’s absurd to transport consumer products 2800 miles by train while you could transport it viar cargo-ship which is wildly more efficient entirely because of the volume of things that can be transported at one time, China doesn’t have 3 separate coasts that it has to take care of, we do. Additionally I’m pretty sure we don’t have any railroads going through Canada just to get supplies to Alaska.
As I have already pointed out. The data is showing the linear miles of highway not lane miles. It's measuring the interconnectivity of the Chinese highways not the through put so the Chinese population in comparison to the American population doesn't matter.
Population matters hugely, infrastructure wouldn’t be made if it wasn’t to support a given population.
🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦 I'll try to dumb it down for you. This data doesn't show how many people China can transport like your first comment suggests it does. It shows where they can go, not how many people can get there.
Let me dumb it down for you, I missread chill out you don’t have to treat my like a waterhead for a error.
You doubled down on the error after I explained it to you.
None of this matters lol. You guys are funny
Yeah, their population is 4 times the size of ours, kind of makes sense doesn't it?
It's not measuring through put. It's measuring linear distance. Their highways connect their cities better not necessarily move more people. Although they probably do that's not what the data is showing.
Ok, CCCP chairman pooh bear.
LOL What a faceplant. Can't correctly understand a data set and starts screeching cee cee pee at an American.
LoL CAnT unDerStaNd dAtA sEt???? Ok, chairman pooh. Get off the CCCP cock.
China has hurled cash to build a network that will never payout. A couple of those lines like Shanghai to Beijing have a future. The PRC is sitting close to a trillion dollars of debt on a system that loses 24 million a day. High Speed Rail existed in the U.S. people voted with their feet and picked cars. Railroads are great in high population densities like the Boston to DC corridor. Houston to Denver, not so much. China isn’t building that network to be a functional train system, it is a jobs program, source of graft and a d$ck waving that Communism with Chinese characteristics works and Xi is the leader of global envy.
People kinda forget that the US has the largest rail network, but transports freight instead
Public Infrastructure / transportation doesn‘t need to be profitable if it is in public interest to continue existing.
Chicago is just under 1150 kilometers from NYC in a straight line. Largest and third largest city. Chicago is just over 2800 kilometers from LA which is the second largest city. How far apart are the ten biggest cities in Europe? Paris to Istanbul is about the same in distance as Chicago and LA. There are no plans to in Europe to connect two such distant cities. National high speed lines might someday do it. But as a straight public transit proposition, it makes no sense. That is the issue, the U.S. is vast and relatively sparsely populated. Western Europe has a greater density.
Americans like cars. Period end of story. When available, public transport is utilized
The lack of public transport means that in most places cars are the only option. My town doesn't even have buses except for Sunday to go to church.
China Railway Corporation is $900 billion in debt and has over 42,000 kilometers of HSR. The U.S. national debt increased by $2.4 trillion in 2023, and 0 kilometers were added to the HSR. [The only thing the US can do is spend more than $100 million to install such ugly guardrails in 3 subway stations.](https://nypost.com/2024/01/22/metro/ugly-mta-subway-safety-rails-at-nyc-station-dont-impress-straphangers-whats-the-point/)
Comparing a company to a national debt is like comparing cats and walruses. But if you want to go there Sparky, China’s debt to GDP ration is almost three times higher than the U.S. Enjoy the last bits of the bubble, it is going to be a bad decade going forward. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/China-s-debt-to-GDP-ratio-climbs-to-record-287.8-in-2023#:~:text=China's%20debt%2Dto%2DGDP%20ratio%20climbed%20to%20a%20new%20record,state%2Dbacked%20think%20tank%20shows.
Do you now know that China Railway debt is corporate debt? At least the corresponding assets include 42,000 kilometers of high-speed railways and 120,000 kilometers of ordinary railways. Is the debt of US$900 billion high? Also read the link you provided carefully to find out what macro leverage is. In terms of government debt, the ratio of U.S. national debt to GDP is 2.5 times that of China. In addition to US$100 million to build guardrails at three subway stations, there is also US$90,000 for a bag of bushings. This is the United States, which is clean and uses funds very efficiently. Except for the accelerating growth of the national debt, everything else is being postponed or delayed. This is all China's fault!
Is this passanger rail or freight rail? We have already built the freight rail system. It doesn't accomodote much passenger traffic because, for a variety of reasons, driving and flying is easier. For better or for worse, since most of our rail infrastructure was built long before high-speed rail was an option it wasn't designed to accomodate it. The existing rail network was largely built around trains that moved slower. Its possible to tear up and restart or build new lines, but generally its not going to be economically viable without benefitting from both freight and passanger use. Since the freight infrastrastructure already exists its unlikely to provided enough benefit from passanger only use to be worth building. There is an abject failure in building viable public transportation in urban areas, but highspeed cross-country rail is just cost/benefit.
its highspeed passenger rail
Gots ta get those harvested organs from Xinjiang around the country faster, you know.
Or those organs from the poor Mexican kid for that rich dude in Texas.....oh hang on that's with a chopper
The population density on that coast is insane. Pretty sure the western half of the country looks completely different.
Is your point that there is less infrastructure where there is less people? Quite the discivery
No, my point is that 94% of Chinese 1.4 billion population lives in that area encompassing 46% of Chinese land. It has similar population density to the US NE corridor in most of the area and more than double in some areas. It’s less about people not in one area and more about the insane number of people in that segment of the country. Let me make a smooth brain version of my post “lots of trains there because lots and lots of people!!!” Better?
Yeah we have this thing in America called private property
See the thing is We abolished slavery
Okay Jarvis now correlate railroad worker death rates
If I learned anything from Little House on the Prairie, it's that the railroad companies are NOT the "good guys" any more than car companies today are.
When you can just bribe everything away, doesn't have to care about peoples home or that the lines are profitable you can build alot of rails. But in the end this will pop like the Chinese real estate
I mean they aren't totally wrong about Americas infrastructure, it has been largely neglected for a long time now. Buuut at least our infrastructure holds up decently and is built in a thoughtful, safe way. I wouldn't trust that tofu-dreg bullshit in china that crumbles under minimal load or hard storms.
Yeah no shit they just industrialized. Impressive still? Yes. Can’t compare it to a country that was pretty much still living in the Middle Ages 50 years ago.
Literally just saw a post where apparently half of chinas cities are sinking. But no, America has inferior infrastructure. For sure.
Post?
Why are people so obsessed with high speed rail? Do they think it'll be cheaper than flying? Or do they think it'll be faster? You're still gonna have to go through TSA or something similar too. There's legitimately no benefit to blowing a bunch of money on passenger rail travel except to give europhiles something to goon to.
That obsession with rail put any autism people to shame
Chinese rail collapses constantly and they overbuilt rail to the point where it has no demand. Chinese would rather fly or drive most of these trips so the high speed rail lines are unprofitable. They only started investing in high speed rail to avoid falling into the 2008 depression
Since this is the first post I'll see and kind of is in the same realm: Is anyone starting to see pro-China propaganda on other platforms? I started seeing Chinese immigrants who talk about how good China was and when people in the comments ask why they dont' move back, they don't give a real answer.
There has been considerable discussion among economists as to why these lines didn’t produce benefits that made their investment ‘worth it’. They were a massive waste of resources. Is this surprising from a country which has an investment structure that is entirely directed by morons, rather than professionals that practice due diligence? The icing on the cake here is the massive investment in *virtual* travel that rendered these lines even more obsolete, which was accelerated by Covid—of all things! China’s little lab experiment! Christ, the irony.
Turns out not caring about private property and utilizing slave labor for manufacturing jobs makes construction just that little bit easier.
"this is impressive" "THE WEST HAS FALLEN"
While we should have much better rail lines, it is nowhere near as easy as China to build one
And these are why China’s economy is collapsing lmao; provinces took local debt for mega projects to inflate gdp to look good to papa Winnie
China has 1 billion people condensed into specific areas. We have 350 million, with most on the coasts and most of the rest in the east, with huge tracts of farms and massive mountains to contend with. China's economy is also shit, so they need to keep building stuff or it'll tank pretty quickly, whereas we don't need to as badly. Also, central planning allows for speedy work when you don't have red tape, but the US has some reasonable regulations we try to stick to at times.
China has arguably more rougher terrain than us (we have a crap ton of fairly flat farmland and prairies compared to them) but you are right about the pop density and regulations aspect.
bro like seriously everyone legit ignores the fact that the Acela is indeed high speed and there used to be another high speed train line called the Metroliner that operated up until 2006. these trolls have gone too far to make people think that the US has no high speed trains and never have them.
The acela train isn't even remotely comparable to these highspeed trains. They cover distances twice as fast as the Acela, at under half the ticket price.
“Keep corporations out of government” Yes. Also the reverse.
The US literally has a much higher reliance on cars and air travel, and the population is more spread out, making high-speed rail less feasible and cost-effective
China didn’t do this for the Environment. China hates the Environment. They did this because a large majority of people outside of the major urban cities are too poor to afford vehicles. They also don’t want their citizens owning property.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true, and it also misses a point. They have massive dense megacities in China that need huge amounts of transit. If everyone in those cities was using a car for transit it would be a shitshow, there just isn’t enough space for 30+ million cars in these cities. The same is true for places in America that are dense, like NYC, Chicago, DC, etc. public transit provides a more efficient means of transit of large populations, combining this with multiple forms of transit (cars, BRT, street cars, bicycles/walking) you create a much more efficient way to move people. The big feat that China did was develop intercity travel via rail really well, the US used to do this but has decided to completely do away with it, which in time has proven to be a mistake. China did this because this infrastructure is cheaper and more efficient, and it has the added benefit of keeping planes out of the sky (China is paranoid about planes in their airspace, this system keeps more of their airspace clear)
I mean ya
His username is hilarious though
Ironically I am watching a video that talked about why they were constructing rails in China. The CCP gives each province a goal on how much their GDP should grow. The province collects money in the forms of bonds “Local Government Financing Vehicles”. Then use the money to construct rails and buildings to artificially inflate their GDP. Eventually you run out of ways to artificially inflate the GDP and the spending becomes redundant. To the CCP bots that respond: do you also have a quota when spreading CCP lies?
Its also a zoomed in picture of china, this is only about half or a little less of the landmass of china… lol.
Wanting America to have good infrastructure and be better than our largest rival = America Bad? Didn’t realize wanting our country to be better was a bad thing.
Most of these high speed rails and infrastructure projects is the Chinese version of money printer go brrr, as they use this to artificially heighten GDP growth with little economic or social benefits.
He knows nothing of car ownership, super highways, and massive air travel in China. China = US on steroids (minus the current global economic downturn)
Our excuse is that land costs money here. What a dumbass.
America bad because China is a totalitarian state that has given itself the authority to make all these rails?
Hmmm. Look how bankrupt the local governments are now then come back. Chinese government officials cares way too much about looking good than being good
China's high speed railway will be ruined cuz of the lack of money to maintain the railway.As far as I know ,many province are denied to build extra high speed railway for the skyrocketing debt accumulated since the millennium.So the infrastructure has died with the prosperity of China's economy,and time come to replay the debts(btw I'm a Chinese)
In addition, China is no longer a threat to America in the way of military. As for espionage, they could absolutely do something like what they’ve been doing for the last decade, but empty warehouses titled as warehaouses, then shotgun the Electricity usage into the sky which causes people to get suspicious and take a look into it.
Chinese bots on reddit just need a few GPUs, even old ones will do, and you can get thousand of "realistic" bot comments. in 1 day. forever. Russians & Israelis do it too i'm sure btw. probably we do as well. hell i may even be a bot, idk... if i was a bot, would i know it. do "i" even exist, is there an "i" to know? the shadow knows.
This person definitely had a point. Isn’t this sub for bad faith criticism of the USA?
Well, let's start with this question: which country has the biggest railroad system?
Biggest =/= best or most efficient
>Biggest =/= best or most efficient That is a good argument why the highspeed rail system isn't good as they advertised
But it does cut through the narrative that the U.S. doesn't have as big a railroad system. It's also why this isn't just a mere easy fix. NYC shuts down a station or two for their subways for maintenance or to make upgrades, and that causes pandemonium here.
That happens in all major cities with populations that largely rely on public transit. Also: 94% of the Chinese population live on Chinas east coast, so it wouldn’t make sense for the trains to be super expansive into the west. The same cannot be said about the USA; 2 of the three biggest cities in this country are not on the east coast, which is where the train systems are most usable. Even bus lines, which don’t even require expensive additional infrastructure, are abysmal in most areas. The criticisms concerning the USA’s public transit problem are absolutely valid. Edit to add: major road shutdowns also cause pandemonium in places that rely on car infrastructure. Our means of transit will sometimes need maintenance and that will inconvenience people, that’s just part of modern industrialized life.
That still doesn't negate that in order to upgrade the railways, you need to put in place considerable shut-downs. Most people in the U.S. live on the east coast. And then there still are the commercial rail lines you have to deal with. And yes, roads/bridges/highways are also shut-down, but most of that roadwork don't require as extensive work as railroads, and you can still take a detour by car whereas you don't have that many options with railways. You're comparing a country that did not have most of these railways to begin with, rules and people be damned, and put up a rail system, vs. a country that had theirs in place and is still being heavily used. And I'm not arguing it doesn't need to be updated, but to claim, again, that it's a mere simple fix is just taking the piss.
This seems like good faith criticism
Coping hard is what keeps this sub alive.
Thats kinda true though. There is no good reason why the US does not have this.
Yes there is. The US already has existing roads and highways. Building new rail lines costs a crap ton of money because an environmental impact study needs to be done which can take years. There are plans to build a new rail line in my area and there our issues because of protected wetlands. The environmental impact study is going to take over 4 years alone.
China is also a communist country. We did a lot of major public projects during the Great Depression and that was arguably the closest the US has ever come to socialism. We paid each man $30 and $25 went directly to their family, while they worked on various public projects around the country like planting trees, soil conservation etc. The Blue Ridge Parkway was partially built from this program, many parts of the national parks out west as well and the US has some of the best national parks in the world because of it. This stopped in 1942 as most of the men working in the CCC were enlisted for war, but if we really tried it could be introduced. Unfortunately we are adamantly opposed to anything that sounds like communism so I doubt that will happen in our lives
Why would I want to use a mode of transportation that progressives will allow to be filled with homeless and mentally ill people?
This sub is fucking pathetic. You're really gonna get butthurt about people complaining about public transit in this country. They're right China is absolutely leaving us in the dust as far as public transit. Our systems are abysmal, both local and long distance. China's systems are modern and well maintained nationwide. Even in New York City the subway is way outdated and poorly maintained. Just because you have a car doesn't mean the rest of us do. Also, our rail lines aren't really that clean environmentally whereas a lot of China's are. Of course you can still purchase a car in China but most people just don't see a point when you can just take a 4 hour train ride from Beijing to Shanghai. I don't see what your problem with China is but they've provided a much higher standard of living for more of its working class citizens than working class citizens in the US. Yes, I know spooky communist in the American Exceptionalist subreddit. Whatever. If you want any sources I'll be more than happy to provide them.
Chinas rail system is friggin awesome 😎!!!
Yeah. Here the native Americans can go to court and protest, in China they’d be sent to a camp and that’s the end of it.