The West and China have different goals.

China's goal is to grow fast at all costs.

To use your street example, the West makes a great effort to listen to the views of all the people affected by the project, including people who live near and work near the project. The West will also do a study to make sure the environmental impact is acceptable. The West will also do a survey to make sure nothing of any historical or archaeological importance isn't affected. The West will put the project out to multiple bidders and make sure that minority-owned companies are represented in the project. Depending on the project, there may also be other studies and considerations.

China just does the project, and if it's done wrong or harms anyone, too bad. Get out of the way.

Different systems. Different philosophies.

One isn't better because it's "fast."

Before I moved to San Francisco, I lived in Beijing for 9 years, the last 3 of those in an apartment in the Sanlitun area of Beijing, within 3 mins walk of a Bentley dealership, Lotus dealership, a craft brewery etc.

When we moved in, a school down the street had construction going on, and was surrounded with scaffolding and then some signage or whatever. The sidewalk was completely blocked off, making it difficult for pedestrians to pass.

Over a year later, they finally finished construction and the updated building was revealed. They'd extended the building to take over the sidewalk completely. You'd think that, if this was intended, then they'd build a new sidewalk and narrow the car lanes a bit. But, no, pedestrians have to walk into the road to go around this school.

This construction was both slow and bad. I admit it's not typical: the nearby Holiday Inn went from zero to operational within a few months.

How you can conclude that the US is in decline because a street repair in a single city takes longer than it probably should is beyond me.

I heard that Italian fascists made the trains run on time, too.

Here is the Chinese high speed rail built in the last decade, it is not propaganda, it's literally something you can buy a ticket for and travel on at 350 km/h right now. I truly worry for Americans incapable of seeing what is happening in the rest of the world.

https://image5.sixthtone.com/image/5/4/861.gif

LOL. China is able to move very fast, but the idea that it's a well-oiled machine functioning in perfect harmony is a ridiculous fiction.

Construction projects in China cut every corner possible. When something fails catastrophically, they'll throw a low-level official under the bus. At every level, there is total abdication of responsibility. The whole system incentivizes this.

See: "The Chabuduo Mindset" https://www.chinaexpatsociety.com/culture/the-chabuduo-minds...

> The west is slow and we are in decline. China is growing fast.

Yes, and this should terrify everyone.

The city has a lot of difficult problems to solve, but it sure does do some horribly wrong things with the simpler problems.

Maybe a change of scenery is in order for you. I can't imaging living in a hellscape like San Fran. I'm in a veritable paradise as far as I can tell. There are problems, but we are working on them, and we generally have the freedom to do so on our own terms without nanny government holding our hand.

Almost all American infrastructure is either a vanity project, a jobs project, or a political quid pro quo operation to an ally to get some other thing done.

The problem is that once you get really used to this mode of operating, you kind of forget that there are sometimes things that really do matter. I think America has a picture of the things she already knows of: crucial highway collapses? gotta fix now! But the ability to recognize new crises goes away without novel crises.

So America can't build ventilators in an emergency, can't train nurses in an emergency, can't do anything new. But I think America can deal with the old things just fine if she wants to.

Any civil engineers here that can explain why “simply” might not apply?

I have watched some sewer modifications[1] here in Christchurch (earthquake damage, Insituform product), and it looked incredibly complicated and I didn’t see how they reconnected each home’s connection to the main.

A typical metaphor for software engineering is rebuilding a plane while it is running. What is an appropriate metaphor when you are fixing old pipes that carry human excrement and the system mostly keeps working while it’s being done...

[1] https://www3.epa.gov/npdes/pubs/rehabl.pdf

Why? I mean, its not news that top-down authoritarianism is very good at doing whatever the top decides needs done without considering anyone else's concerns or interests, this isn't something that needs study.

And there are no shortages of places practicing that to decamp to if that is your preference for style of government.

When it's keeping the "other" out it's gross, but when they are shutting down pointless vanity projects like a sculpture park no one wants maybe that's democracy as advertised.

An example in Atlanta was a politician friends with those of the same party works in another county but serves on advisement boards for the city as a sole employee of those boards netting him hundreds of thousands a year. It only came to light because he screwed up the taxes. This is wide spread, as in nation wide. All those committees and such are mostly there to reward each other, family, and friends.

China just eliminated having any competing political power. They have factions within but all serve the same top.

Example of gaming the system https://www.ajc.com/politics/fulton-da-howard-fined-by-state...

However, before we go asking the commies how to run governments, there are perhaps some other, less authoritarian, countries who also get things done that we might look at?

China is not 'well managed', rather, they can 'move quickly and build things of questionable quality' in some places, not others.

The ability to build some material things very quickly is definitely useful and creates some utility, but it's not tantamount to 'well managed'.

SF has busses, trains and a subway that run, it's far from perfect, but what they suffer from is 'too much money'.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/#:~:text=Gr....

[2] https://www.transparency.org/en/

And who of course would object when doing so would ding your "social credit" score and restrict your right to do things like travel, or access the internet.

I agree that single party states run very well, after all when you don't have to worry about pesky freedoms or rights it's amazing what you can accomplish.

Next up President Xi Jinping has a 99% approval rating. How does China produce such beloved politicians?