The problem with Westbahn is that they're likely deep in debt and still not profitable (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbahn_(Unternehmen)#Gesch.C...).
And for the Railjet: it's cheaper because the track fees are lower - here figures from 2011: http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?3,5403272
You don't have real high speed at all: 775km is more or less the same as Paris-Marseille and that's 3h20.
1) it's a quasi-dictatorial regime. Which means, when the government wants something, like a high-speed train track, being built, then it's built, without many ways for affected people to impede/cancel the project or drive up its price (e.g. in Germany train projects are usually delayed or the cost driven up by environmental concerns or noise complaints).
2) Money. China doesn't care about printing money or raising debt to finance the expansion of infrastructure. In Europe, especially in Germany, this is not the case. Printing money is only acceptable to sustain banks. (A policy which I absolutely hate)
3) Local politicians. In Germany, many regional/local politicians want their village connected to the ICE network for their personal fame - one particularly wasteful example is Montabaur, it has regular ICE stops with only 12k inhabitants. Every stop creates a huge delay for trains and kills their average speed. Once again, not so much a problem in China.
One train on google maps for example has 7 stops between Beijing and Shanghai. Meanwhile Hamburg-Munich has 9 stops on a trip half the length.
At any rate, yes I can compare the absolute times because that's what passengers will do when making choices on how to get from A to B. If the trip in Germany was an hour faster, more people would choose the train.
In the US, it's usually always faster to drive. Traffic congestion can make the train attractive in the northeast.
You sure about that?
The non-stop train takes 4 hours from beijing to shanghai. now they stop once and it takes 4hr48 (reduced max speed from 330 to 300km/h). At the same distance, DB stops roughly 14 or 15 times. if a stop costs you 10 minutes, you save an additional 2 1/2 hours just by not stopping.
Took the info from wikipedia [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_High-...
Flight may be 1:15h pure flight time, but you have to add 1.5h of public transit time to get to/from the airports, plus ~1h for security and pre-boarding wait times, and luggage costs are enormous. Oh, and the security checks make you feel like a terrorist.
Buses are f...ing cheap, but take ~10-11h.
So, the train is still the fastest and most time-efficient way to travel across big distances. The only problem is that it's expensive as hell, because unlike the regional trains, the ICE trains don't get any public subsidies and have to be profitable on their own.