this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Developed high speed rail since 2008 in China vs the US:
The silver lining of autocracy.
Why would a democratically elected leader plan for the long term if their sucessors, possibly from an opposition party, can claim credit for it.
In a dictatorship, they can plan for the long term, since they know they will be in power.
Also, the hyper-individualism in western countries doesn't make "working together" as a country easier. Just look at the anti-maskers and anti-vax people lol
And also, the big population in China would never allow for a "car culture" in the firsr place, since there just isn't room for that many cars, public transit is a must for a densely populated country.
"China has good railways because China bad" is one hell of a bad take.
China isn't an autocracy any more than the US is, getting to vote which party gets to erode your rights and enact genocide on your behalf isn't democracy
Xi Jinping's third term is literally autocracy. President Cheeto would kill for that much power.
America as fucked up as we, are can bash our president and resist his power grabs as much as our oligarchy allows.
In China, you can't even post a whinnie the pooh cartoon because making an autocratic dictator look bad can't fly.
China doesn't have rapid shifts in infrastructure because China bad, it's because China has an autocratic dictatorship which allows for massive investment of resources without argument.
The US has massive investment of resources without argument too when it comes to the military industrial complex or to rescuing banks that have committed fraud, or to genocide Palestinians. The fact that it doesn't do so with basic infrastructure is because the oligarchs in the US don't want that, not because of a lack of oligarchs in power. They make it theatrical in congress, but look at the defense budged and the speed with which they approve multi-billion expenses that go into bombing kids in the middle east, suddenly the American democracy works expediently.
People talk about it and complain. there was and is debate on all those topics. You have lost in all the topics you are talking about, but it was fair and square.