Infrastructure seems to be your main point to say one place is more modern than the other.

I would partially agree but it's more nuanced than that.

The high speed trains in China are impressive projects but could also be used as form of control over people who live outside the cities.

Also going cashless is not necessarily a good thing. There is a loss of anonymity in having every transaction be digitally handled. Also, another form of control.

My apologies for my dystopian view. But not all modern advances are necessarily good.

> The high speed trains in China are impressive projects but could also be used as form of control over people who live outside the cities.

Explain?

I've been on them a few years ago, as a visitor, and I suspect that's referring to the security checkpoints that you have to pass through. It's not like taking a bus or other public transit; the experience is closer to taking a plane across an international border.

And just a week to receive an organ transplant. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21104324

>- a country wide network of high speed railroads in a country larger than the US

That's more of a factor of population density and distribution than anything else. There's few places in the US where high speed rail makes sense compared to airplanes.

China is building high speed rail even where it doesn't "make sense", as part of a national policy to tie the country together. Here's a current map.[1] That's comparable to having high speed rail to every major city east of the Mississippi, plus a line out to the West Coast.

[1] https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/train/high-speed...

Why don’t you move there immediately?

Oh yeah, we all know why.

How is China larger than the US?

Not a significant difference, but China does have more land area than US:

China: 9.32 million km^2 of land

US: 9.14 million km^2 of land

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...