If that's speed or cost or if it's really only 100x doesn't matter.
This is a fundamental superiority Chinese society has, and I don't see the US switching to a pro construction stance anytime soon!
No one said to uncritically accept anything. In fact, the hidden assumption is usually to uncritically accept that anything the U.S. does is the best.
I simply implied that to attempt to stay ahead, one needs to not blatantly dismiss and discredit what others do, but this is unfortunately very common place in the U.S., whether it regards China or any other country.
I have visited China. Whether there's propaganda or not, it doesn't explain away the amount of nice roads, trains, subways, etc. and the efficiencies of these systems. Coming back to the U.S. felt like stepping back decades when it comes to transportation aside from a few things. China does not magically transport people via smoke and mirrors. They are actually doing it.
In my city, it's taken decades to build mere single digit miles worth of above ground train track, and it's still not done. Propaganda on either side does not magically explain away the disparity.
The real danger today doesn't lie in authoritarianism but in a lack of state capacity. Decades of fearmongering have led the US and significants chunks of Europe to a point where governments can't provide cotton swabs during a pandemic and can't build housing in their cities.
Yes, it does lie in authoritarianism, and that (“lack of state capacity”) is literally always the defense of authoritarianism, especially from those who like to pretend to be merely reluctant supporters rather than ideological devotees.
> . Decades of fearmongering have led the US and significants chunks of Europe to a point where governments can't provide cotton swabs during a pandemic
I'm not going to talk about Europe, but there is absolutely not a “state capacity” problem produced by “decades of fearmongering” I the US of that kind. Both the material capacity and the administrative capacity for the federal executive to direct that material capacity with no effective veto points exists. The present federal executive deliberately choose to apply that power in the worst possible way, withholding it from practical and useful supplies, preventing subordinate authorities from acquiring supplies they had located despite the lack of federal cooperation, and applying federal production mandates to prevent major disease spreading centers (meat packing plants with major outbreaks) from being closed to constrain the spread of the disease.
One can turn this around trivially. Vague allusions to tyranny are always made to justify present-day dysfunction, without any clear expanation of how concrete steps actually lead to said tyranny. It usually just resembles a sort of vague, primal fear of authority.
And on the second point, the US doesn't just have implementation problems. It also altogether lacks power. One reason why construction is so expensive is simply the extreme difficulty to overrule local interests when it comes to acquiring land, and related the threat of litigation.
That's a structural issue, not just a sort of temporary failure. The reason Europe can build rail at one fourth the cost per mile is (among other reasons), that local homeowners don't rule supreme. Just look at California to see what a mess it is.
https://aeon.co/essays/what-chinese-corner-cutting-reveals-a...
~18 workers died and hundreds were injured building the HK bridge to Macau and the Mainland which opened in 2018.
It's about a bias towards building things and taking action.
Construction in the US bordering on a "Vetocracy". Everyone and their NIMBY uncle can oppose anything being done. So what little gets done happens after many years and at great cost.
uhh, source for this? Efficiency measured how? dollars per building? man-hours per building?
I think it was someone reasonably credible on Twitter, not too long ago.
From an economic perspective it might look more efficient, yes.
The decision to build something is a straightforward yes/no one that does not get dragged through various permitting instances for years and decades only to probably be denied eventually.
China isn't even a poor country anymore. It's middle income, and is losing jobs to poorer countries these days.
If it's just complete BS, does that matter?