Mildly Infuriating

We don’t have to agree with China’s politics to appreciate that they did a positive thing. And we shouldn’t have to emulate their politics to get a thing done. We should be able to do it

!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works

Lemmy has tankie problem.

The speed and size is impressive, yes.

But I doubt the quality.

"Tofu-dreg project" (Chinese: 豆腐渣工程) is a phrase used in the Chinese-speaking world to describe a very poorly constructed building, sometimes called just "Tofu buildings". The phrase is notably used referring to buildings that collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake disaster,[1][2][3][4][5][6] and the Bangkok Audit Office skyscraper collapse initiated by aftershocks from the March 2025 Myanmar earthquake over 1000km away, which was constructed with poor construction techniques and materials

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu-dreg_project

Lemmy is more international than Reddit, so you'll see more diverse perspectives

What helps is that the aumomotive/gas industry lobby there isnt so effective.

Pentagon wasted tax money on facebook bots to convince people in East Asia that the chinese covid vaccine was poison, so no one is really buying the "China human rights abuses are what allow China to succeed" idea anymore.

Especially since you can just as easily point to Japan's infrastructure projects which achieved the same thing under US supervision post WWII, meaning said human rights violations aren't even a supposed cost if there's less evidence of it that of UAE literally pirating in immigrants to build their lavish towers and stadiums.

Of which the US fully supports, so this just goes back to the blame game of who is worse.

Yes, China has some shady ideas of what is considered acceptable behavior and work output from citizens, but the point is that they are using it to rapidly grow their infrastructure, unlike NA which take a decade for a single transit system to get approved all while car OEMs are pumping out dumpsterfire vehicles of whose parts are overwhelmingly made in China.

We have had industrial accidents and deaths as well... We may have better safety standards but going from no subway system to a massive full city system more robust than Western countries in a fraction of the time is pretty remarkable.

Digging tunnels is dangerous. Especially if you dont have a century of experience to build off of.

This is like the 2 extremes. China with terrible human rights violation and sloppy construction and cities where even thinking about mass public transit is akin to killing puppies.

21st century Laozi

I wonder why

While your comment is very amusing, accessibility and congestion are pretty high up on the list of things that make a place "nice." A deep Investment into public transit is very likely to have a positive impact on an inhabitant's happiness.

(Incidentally, it's ironic that you have leapt to the conclusion that one of these cities is "winning" while nothing of the sort is stated in the post, only then to take objection to people drawing such conclusions.)

Meanwhile Hamburg, Germany with only 1.8 Million: