This is a classic "pros and cons" situation. I'm not sure the ability for the authorities to "get shit done" would balance the downsides, e.g.:
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2023/07/05/...
I don't know why things are so difficult now. There's got to be some detailed studies into this problem.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Works_Administration
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_195...
US ISPs also have a history of lobbying to prevent municipal broadband projects, which could provide faster speeds cheaper than large monopolies can. They get the projects blocked by promising to solve the problem themselves, then once the block is in place they just yolo out. Verizon takes massive grants to improve broadband in areas, doesn't do it, and then just... nothing.
Even H&R Block is lobbying to prevent making tax returns easier so that they can continue to be one of the only companies that can file people's taxes without screwing it up (which they do anyway).
China certainly benefits from cutting huge corners, but we also need to remember that every time there's an opportunity to make people's lives better in the US, there's a rich corporation lobbying against it to preserve the profits they're milking out of people's suffering or desperation.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/elon-musk-boring-company-tu...
People are all for it--until the steamroller comes for them. https://www.cnn.com/style/article/china-three-gorges-dam-int...
And we know what happens when you let people ignore the regulations--you get Superfund sites.
There is a political balance between "saving 3 salamanders in a cave" and "pervasive dumping of toxic sludge".
The problem is that there is lots of incentive towards the "pervasive dumping" side and not a lot on the "saving things" side.
Safety: Did the fast projects result in more injuries or deaths?
Social: Willingly vs. unwilling participation. IE seized land vs. sold willingly at market rate. Coerced by gov to help build the hospital vs. paid market labor rate.
Environmental: Much easier to design and build a hydro dam when you don't need to worry about still allowing the Salmon to swim upstream.
Social: There was no "coercion" by the government to help build the hospital. The workers who built the hospital were paid over 10,000 CNY for 8 days of work [3]. Despite the need to work extended hours to expedite the process, possibly from 8 am to 12 am, it should be noted that the market rate for a month's work for typical construction workers under normal working hours is approximately 8,000 CNY.
Environmental: The most recent 16kMGW hydrodam at Baihetan received approval from the National Bureau of Environmental Protection despite potential negative impacts on the ecosystem. Various ecological and environmental measures were implemented to mitigate these impacts [4]. This approach contrasts markedly with that of the West or areas heavily influenced by the West like Hong Kong, where a small environmental group can obstruct major projects. China adopts a holistic approach, balancing economic needs with environmental concerns through different stages of development. China believes that as it develops, it can impose higher standards. For instance, until 2018, China imported plastic waste from the West, but halted this practice to the dismay of many Westerners [5].
[1]: https://www.mot.gov.cn/jiaotonggaikuang/201804/t20180404_300...
[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/highwayworkzones/default.ht...
[3]: https://china.caixin.com/2020-02-15/101515765.html
[4]: https://www.mee.gov.cn/gkml/sthjbgw/spwj1/201511/t20151125_3...
[5]: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/7025017...
> This approach contrasts markedly with that of the West or areas heavily influenced by the West like Hong Kong, where a small environmental group can obstruct major projects. China adopts a holistic approach, balancing economic needs with environmental concerns through different stages of development.
[1]: http://bs.dayabook.com/five-classics/THE-BOOK-OF-RITES/42-ta...
The wins pay for the failures ten times over. And while everyone laughs at ghost cities, with what people learned there you can build the next real city twice as fast. Effectiveness, getting things done, is more important than efficiency. In the EU and NA we now routinely need to bring military, nuclear or civil engineers out of retirement, because we've built so little that we've lost generations of knowledge.
I am not sure about putting human lives as an operand in win/loss arithmetic, like some typical resource. China is not in a hot war.
Some of the completed structures include:
- The Cedar Viaduct, a 3,700-foot-long bridge over State Route 99 in Fresno, which features a signature double arch design².
- The Hanford Viaduct, a 3,300-foot-long bridge over the Kings River and State Route 43 in Kings County, which is the longest structure in Construction Package 2-3²⁴.
- The San Joaquin River Viaduct, a 4,700-foot-long bridge over the San Joaquin River and North Avenue in Fresno County, which includes a pergola structure to allow future trains to cross over the existing BNSF Railway tracks²³.
- The Tuolumne Street Bridge, a two-way bridge that spans the Union Pacific Railroad tracks and future high-speed rail tracks in downtown Fresno²³.
- The Fresno Trench and State Route 180 Passageway, a two-mile-long trench that will carry high-speed trains under several streets in Fresno, including State Route 180²³.
It's nowhere near 5,000, but this whole CAHSR isn't going anywhere... it's going! Slowly but surely. Would I like it to be done before I have grandkids? Absolutely. As the proverb goes though: Blessed Are Those Who Plant Trees Under Whose Shade They Will Never Sit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_California_Hig....
[2] https://hsr.ca.gov/about/project-update-reports/2023-project....
[3] https://hsr.ca.gov/2023/05/11/video-release-high-speed-rail-....
[4] https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/high-speed-rail/article...
(Not to reuse my comment from upthread, but.)
Autocracy gets shit work done.
On certain high profile projects, sure. But autocracy typically embeds a lot of corruption at every level of the system which creates a drag in many ways.
A system that prioritizes loyalty and obedience to your superiors more than anything tends to have a lot of waste.
Let's be honest, there is plenty of corruption in democracies and autocracies are pretty damn good at infrastructure. Just not an ideal governing structure for individual freedom and things like property rights which we value higher than efficiency of building things fast.
But is China’s really so bad it is going to crumble in half of that?
Yeah yeah, I've heard that story before. "He made the trains run on time." Then we found out there were no trains at all.
Autocracies have always had a knack for really good marketing, gotta admit that.
Chinese HSR does its own marketing. The material benefit to people around the country, particularly in rural areas, cannot be overstated.
I am not sure why this gets repeated. Hong Kong (pre. China) and Taiwan gets shit done fast too and they are (were) not an autocratic place to live in (actually they had better environments than the US due to that most people comply without a fuss).
California had only 10 permanent employees on its HSR project, everyone else was a contractor. Furthermore, "Interest groups wield CEQA and NEPA like weapons. One study found that 85 percent of CEQA lawsuits were filed by groups with no history of environmental advocacy. The NIMBY attitude of these groups has crippled the ability of California to build anything." [0]
Other governments do not have to take the same approach. The choice is not limited to "be California or be a dictatorship", there are thousands of examples of states taking both a long and short time to do things, regardless of how autocratic they are. Another example from that article, "The Netherlands has strong unions, but the Port of Rotterdam has been automated to an extent that has proven impossible in the U.S. due to union resistance." - if you'd like to know more about how that went, see what the Port of Rotterdam has been doing [1] and what the union ultimately got for their strike action [2] - spoiler alert, they did not stop the increasing pace of automation, as US unions seem to have managed.
> Also built numerous hospitals during pandemic in a couple weeks.
So did the UK government, and then had to close them all as they weren't useful. Haste made waste. "As of 5 May 2020, six of the seven planned hospitals had opened, and by the following month all had been placed on standby. [...] almost all of the increased demand for critical care was met by expanding capacity in existing hospitals. By June, all the temporary hospitals had been placed on standby. Only two had admitted patients" [3]
> Demolished and replaced a bridge in 43 hours
This is normal these days for reasonably small spans [4]
> You just have to quash special interests sometime. Autocracy gets shit done.
You don't have to go to one extreme or another, you can allow your citizens rights and still build rapidly. Certainly, there are tradeoffs, and it depends on the history and traditions of your own country, as to what your citizens will accept. Sometimes regulations get in the way of progress. Sometimes, lack of regulations kill and maim your citizens and destroy their lives, and their childrens' lives. [5] There's no single good ideological approach that works best.
[0] https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/06/09/why-america-cant-bui...
[1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/rotterdam-port-ships-automat...
[2] https://www.fnvhavens.nl/component/content/article?id=317:ag...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_hospitals_in_the_Unit...
Also landed a rover on Mars in 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhurong_(rover), but I"m not sure how it compares development speed to NASA. Designed for 90 days, lasted 4x that.
As much as the US denigrates China for allegedly trampling on "freedoms," I bet our way of doing speedy big projects in the past has a lot in common with China's current progress. You just have to quash special interests sometime. Autocracy gets shit done.