It seems unlikely anyone is as cost-efficient as Falcon 9 with reuse.
It appears to me, as an outsider, that Atlas and Ariane are 4-5 times as expensive to operate. There is probably plenty of room for China to operate more efficiently than that. Especially with their launch volume, which is second only to SpaceX.
China has lots of money (for now...) so they can throw a lot of resources at the problem. In China, quick public successes always take precedence over doing it right.
> In China, quick public successes always take precedence over doing it right.
I'd like to see some evidence for this huge, unnuanced claim. Of course they have an incentive to look good. So do companies all over the world. But to claim that that's all they do is to ignore the elephant in the room, namely 40 years of growth in prosperity that's unprecedented in human history.
India is 1/6 of the world's population and its media sentiment towards China has been trending sharply downwards over the past few years.
Check out figure 15 for South Asia's sentiment on China.
Corruption is still a major problem and there is no signs it has gotten better. African Swine Flu as an example can't be contained because that would need unbribeable enforcement. No-Covid only works (in the enforcement sense) because of draconian penalties. Cronyism is an epidemic disease in itself, you can't advance in China, no matter your qualifications, if you aren't highly connected, and most aren't.
Yes, I'm speaking in broad terms. But I did predict a glass ceiling years ago, because the lack of openness means terrible risk management and sophisticated risk management is crucial for sustained exponential. It has finally happened, growth in China shrank after Covid and the recovery is worse than in the rest of the world.
If you need a reason not to trust China look at what happened to Hong Kong with all the promises made by CCP leadership. Look at the CCP attempts to shape policy, including in western universities. Look at the genocide against the Uyghurs. Look at the issue of organ harvesting, which is partly propaganda and partly the CCP itself hinders any attempts to actually disprove the allegations with their lack of transparency. I am forced to consider the CCP as evil-doers in the same order of magnitude as Nazi Germany. And that is before they try and retake Taiwan, which will be an unbelievably bloody business.
China has a lot of systemic issues stemming from corruption and nepotism, but they also have a large population and a culture of investing in the education of their children. It isn't a coincidence that there is a huge number of Asians at elite US colleges, which would be even higher if affirmative action wasn't so prevalent. Its only a matter of time before China will catch up to the US and reach technology parity.
"Catching up" means China is growing faster than the west, both in economy and technological know-how. But at present China is only marginally out-growing the West, even using the CCP numbers.
The US does have the advantage in that high performing individuals on the level of Einstein have a higher chance of emerging due to much more personal freedom and social mobility, but that is difficult to account for because someone like Einstein may or may not emerge in the next 100 years.
Overall the economic growth is clearly faltering. And with a GDP growth rate that is only one or two percentage points ahead of "the West" the catching up is going to take a lot longer. It's quite the same with education, which is just another industry among many. China is running into a glass ceiling because of its system.
Additionally there is an economic world war raging right now, mostly against Russia. But China is increasingly getting on the wrong side of this, with much of the world opposing China.
Why do you think that's a reasonable assumption to make?
Edit: Some more propaganda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o96yCGqCHFg <- Will be interesting in a few years, I guess.
China has already overbuilt its highspeed rail system. China really doesn't need another solution for a problem it doesn't have.
Edit: Maybe they could use this to overbuild their already existing net with a dozen to two dozen strategically located stations, as an overlay of hyperhubs, and use the interconnections to conventional HSR as spokes which branch off of these.
To make it even more competitive to air travel, especially for longer distances.
You assume that company is giving an accurate picture of what it has achieved. That's not how it works in China...