The US does not have, and will never have, an effective high-speed-rail network. Nor does it really need one. You can already get from every city to every other city in a slow convenient way (car) or a fast inconvenient way (plane), and there's no real need for a third method intermediate in speed. Have you ever been at a total loss to figure out how to get from one city to another conveniently? I haven't.
The Chinese government can build high speed rail, cuz it doesn't mind ripping up the houses of hundreds of thousands of people to build dead-straight rail lines into the middle of cities. The US, at this stage, has far too much investment in its cities to rip 'em up just so that I can get from San Francisco to Los Angeles in four hours (instead of seven hours, or one hour).