Comment by BelenusMordred | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BelenusMordred | Hacker News Reader

Before this thread goes off the rails with politics I'd like to say the Chinese high speed rail system is amazing to use and it's unreal how quick they built it.

I've been to the country a few times now and hated every second of air travel there, it's messy, people behave really badly regarding rules and pilots are always changing altitude/speed during (supposedly) level flight to the point that you feel like you are on a rollercoaster.

In comparison train travel is incredibly pleasant and efficient, albeit sometimes quite busy. I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion but many countries in the West should hire the Chinese to construct and build HSR in their countries with foreign labour under local direction. The benefits are huge for rail. Airports for short journeys just seem wasteful and incapable of dealing with climate change problems. Not to mention the stress of security hassles.

Here's the last 12 years of rail in China: https://image5.sixthtone.com/image/5/4/861.gif

In Australia we have been debating the high speed rail issue and doing feasibility studies for two decades now. The cost of AUD $100 billion was considered to not be worth it. Federal covid cash handouts to individuals in the last year alone topped $200 billion.

> many countries in the West should hire the Chinese to construct and build HSR in their countries with foreign labour under local direction

There's absolutely no reason to do it, most (if not all) western countries are perfectly capable of building highspeed railway technically speaking. The reason why it's not done is political and financial. Also in the current climate you'll have a hard time justifying hiring a chinese companies over a domestic company to build critical infrastuctures (and rightfully so imo). In fact I believe public contracts should always be awarded to domestic companies, granted domestic companies with the required skills exist (which is absolutely the case in Europe for railway).

>many countries in the West should hire the Chinese to construct and build HSR in their countries with foreign labour under local direction

We tried that with highways in Poland. Chinese company Covec came in, underbid for 30 and 20 km pieces of A2, got paid advances, hired local labour, didnt pay contractors for finished work, decided they didnt like the project any more and wanted more money, packed up and left with half the contracted work done.

One of the reasons cited for the failure was arrest of Liu Zhijuna, Chinese minister of rail, for alleged corruption. Covec was a China Railway Group subsidiary.

Regulations are to blame here, not lack of skills or capabilities. The Chinese companies won’t fare any better with this type of regulatory environment.

What are the regulations that let you not pay contractors and just fuck off from the country once you dont like the deal you yourself proposed signed off?

> it's messy, people behave really badly regarding rules

you didn't have the same problem when riding HSR trains? next time maybe just check how many are smoking on the platform.

another interesting experiment you can have is to visit both those old train stations and stations dedicated for HSR, you'd easily spot differences in terms of how people behave.

> you didn't have the same problem when riding HSR trains?

No, not really, there was some very busy queues but for the most part it was civilised, Saw a few times a guy trying to walk to front of a ticket queue and the station lady yelling at him, then the people in the line started yelling too and he walked to the back. That's about it.

On planes I have repeatedly seen groups of people unbuckle their belts and start opening the overhead luggage about 30 seconds before touchdown, multiple air hostesses would get on the intercom and scream for them to sit down but no one listens and gets their bags anyway. Honestly chaotic stuff.

My experiences over a decade anyway.

Yeah it's political and off-topic, but it's also something to see how their citizens are trained by CCP to blatantly include Taiwan for every map they make (the post link and the gif)

I like entertaining the idea that citizens are not mindless sheep that can only be “trained”. I bet there’re many who believe Taiwan is part of greater China.

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