...with lax safety standards and little consideration for property rights.

We could build the Melbourne - Sydney high speed rail line in 3 years if we didn’t care about a) the people who built it or b) the people whose houses were in the way.

The property rights one always bothers me; it seems to me that if you're right where a necessary transport link needs to be, you should of course be fairly compensated, but ultimately you shouldn't have any say/choice in the matter.

Ridiculous obstacles like this are, IMO, a major part of why the US is seemingly completely paralyzed when it comes to constructing any major transit projects.

The US government does have the power to seize private property for the public's benefit, it's called Eminent Domain [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

One problem is that historically it somehow turned out that poorer, blacker people tended to be the ones in the way of big transportation projects. A lot of the backlash has roots in real abuses.

How many would benefit vs how many are inconvenienced? Seems like the beneficiaries easily outnumber the few who lose out.

Another benefit would be that people would pay much greater attention to local politics. You would need to make sure that the bus road goes through your neighbor's house, not your house. Whoever ignores the local democracy, loses their house; that is a powerful incentive for participation. What could possibly go wrong?

Easily said if you’re not one of the latter category, I suppose.

I am all for the compulsory purchase of property for very large infrastructure projects like this. Protection of worker safety is less negotiable.

Pertinent to this discussion, if you haven’t seen the wonderful Aussie film ‘The Castle’, you should.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpqT_l7QcBM

Property rights still exist but since it only became a concept about 80 years ago lots of property still belongs to the government and they can generally give you something worth more than your current property.

In all fairness, this thing in China is more close to Italian Fascism from the '30s...

Why was this downvoted ? I thought it was common knowledge that the current China is communist only in name, but more capitalist than most western countries in practice?

Is it not?

Eh, pretty much Capitalism end game. I'd call it Corporativist Fascism as Mussolini blabbered about.

I do not know if centralized planning is capitalism. Beijing decides what need to be done, then they make that happen. It might look like capitalism from afar but it is not. For example, in true capitalism, companies that make money-losing decisions go out of business. In China, the central government does not go out of business and the government owned companies executing those ideas do not go out of business.

Having the losers go bankrupt and exit the playing field is an important part of capitalism.