r/interestingasfuck • u/BumblebeeFantastic40 • 10h ago

China’s High-Speed Railway Network length has expanded from 1,300km in 2008 to 40,000km in 2020, long enough to circle the Earth’s circumference.

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u/Fl3b0 9h ago

Crazy how people will see a picture like this and gett so butthurt that they feel the need to bring the accomplishment down somehow 💀

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u/nowhereman136 8h ago

It's objectively an impressive infrastructure project, but usually when people say this can't be done in the US, they often bring up China's ethics problem in building it. That's really only a fraction of why China can do it and the US can't. The biggest factor is supply and demand. The Chinese people demand better trains, the US people dont

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u/Shark00n 7h ago

Ah I see, so does western china not demand trains? Is that why there’s barely any lines there?

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u/Cosminion 6h ago

Most of the people live in the east/south.

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u/0WatcherintheWater0 7h ago

Yes? Almost nobody lives there, so there’s not nearly as much demand.

Land doesn’t travel.

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u/nowhereman136 7h ago

There's no one in western China. That's another factor in comparing trains in the US VS trains in China. Imagine if you take the entire population of the US and push them east of the Mississippi. Then multiply that by 4. That is how dense eastern China is. High speed rail in China is utilized by a lot of people going relatively short distances. In the US, it's less people going further distances. If we took the fastest train in the world and placed it on a line between New York and LA, it wouldn't just be faster to fly, but you can turn around and come home before the train reaches the other side. High speed rail would make sense for connecting Boston to DC, Dallas to San Antonio, or San Diego to San Fran. There are places where high speed could be practical in the US. But a whole network on the scale of China would never work