this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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China wants unity, even in places where it doesn't make economic sense.
edit: 100% downvotes are coming from people that don't know the situation. The CCP wants fast travel to major population centers even when the rail line isn't profitable.
Isn't that a good thing? sounds like the rail is being run as a public utility rather than a business. And its still likely profitable if you average the cost over all the lines.
I never said it was a good/bad thing. I'm saying the Chinese gov. isn't as concerned with profit. Which explains the difference between California and China
In theory yes, but not the way that China does it. Every other country with a rail system operates at a loss, however, those losses are generally made up indirectly by the economic activity that gets created because of the infrastructure. This is the case for Japan, Germany, France, whatever. China's HSR system has is so illogical and has so much debt that it can't possibly pay for itself. If were to compare the debt per kilometer for the different countries' rail system, China would stand alone at the top in a tier of it's own. Having $900 billion in debt on a HSR system is insane.
It makes economic sense but not financial sense. Railways are almost always profitable once considering second and third order effects.
It's the same story with Amtrak, so I'm not sure why people are so confused. Amtrak loses money on every train that's not the NEC.
China's HRS has racked up so much debt that it can't possibly generate any money directly or indirectly. Being $900 billion in debt for a HSR system is insane.
Are they siding with the hunter or the emissary this time?
No, you're wrong. China wants constant high GDP growth. The CCP understands that Marxism is a failure, they just the rhetoric to justify their insane actions. China's HSR system is illogical no matter which way you try to spin it. There are a lot of systems that don't operate on a profit, in fact most don't, however, no system is unsustainable as China's HSR system. It is a very new system in a very populated country, yet it has already racked up over $900 billion in debt. To put things in perspective, Germany's whole rail system (includes slow trains, fast trains, and freight) is about $20 billion in debt. If Germany were to have a train system as big as China's (150k km vs 40k km for Germany), Germany's debt for it's rail system would be around $74 billion. China has racked up $900 billion just for HRS alone. That's like economy crushing levels of unsustianable.
did you mean to say utility instead of unity?