> Here is the Chinese high speed rail built in the last decade, it is not propaganda, it's literally something you can buy a ticket for and travel on at 350 km/h right now.

Yeah, its nice. Authoritarian regimes usually have some nice prestige projects to show, which is really nice if you are a foreigner they are trying to impress, or a local that is in favor with the regime. Not so much if you are out-of-favor, whether because you opposed the particular approach they took for the prestige project or for some unrelated reason.

But, as much as I like HSR and wish the US would do it, emulating China -- whose ability to do it isn't a mystery needing study, but well-understood -- isn't a cost worth paying for it.

No need to be authoritarian.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/High_Spe...

I don't see anyone claiming China didn't build high speed rail. I do see a number of people questioning the parent poster's metric for evaluating the future of China and the west, when many countries in the west also have high speed rail systems and that focus on one measurement of success is probably at least a little myopic.

(op here) Thanks. The idea of not being number one is a difficult notion for people to reconcile.

Well, there is a McDonalds at Guantanamo , so everything is possible

Pretty smug-sounding for someone living in the nation with 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners.

Yes, I feel fortunate that I can say such things without being cloth-sacked away.

I'm not exactly pro-prison, but so far I haven't heard any alternatives that I believe would work as a solution to violent crime. I'm open to suggestions. It is certainly the case that the U.S. has too many laws.

You could totally say that in China as a Chinese citizen and nothing would happen to you.

Not on weibo.

I didn’t say nothing would happen to his post... but then Zuck and Jack do the same thing in this here land of freedom...

The gulag trains happen to pass through the residential and commercial districts.