I've recently rode through a Belt&Road project: The Lao high-speed train. In my opinion, it shows the complete failure of the Chinese government. The high-speed train is a reasonably great train that goes through dozens (hundreds?) of mountains and rivers (through tunnels and bridges). It does that while enabling you to work from the comfort of your chair. And while it's not high-speed (as in 300Km/h), it is reasonably fast.

The train station locations, however, are just non-sense. This is because they are too far, and for many stations, there is no "road" to connect to the city. Couple that with the retarded system they have to check-in which requires you to be in the station one hour before your train departs and suddenly a 40 minutes ride becomes a 2.5 hours ride. Might as well just use a regular bus?

In my opinion, the Chinese government is still living in the 80s (along with 80s technology). The Chinese economy (or parts of China) is living in a parallel reality with companies that are quite developed if not world-class. This means the Chinese government can "execute" quite advanced projects while being a peasant itself.

It's not clear what's sustaining the central government in China, or what's the level of discontent in the productive provinces.