I said that in direct response to someone saying it would be good to go for monumental design as it will train the workforce in construction. That is why I would recommend starting with trying to keep costs low in building out a new system.

The length of these deals is also not exactly the strong "gotcha" you seem to think it is.

A lot can change in 100 years. People who aren't born now will be subject to that agreement. This includes China being able to project power enough to keep these farflung businesses in operation. I'm not treating to as a "gotcha", just that it is risk.

The US has shown how to completely destroy a domestic passenger rail industry...

The USA also used to have the best rail industry in the world 100 years ago, including building some alignments that would be near high speed standards today. But even then, I never suggested that the US build the rail network described now.

[–] zephyreks@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

I don't disagree with all of your points, I'm just claiming that short maintenance contracts and onshoring all production might not be feasible in the volatile environments that these countries are in.

Fact is, China has a more stable government than a lot of African countries (and a decent track record of maintaining their own HSR) and there's no reason to expect significant backtracking on China's economic liberalization.

Other fact is, onshoring has a pretty strong record of blowing through budgets and timelines for minimal net gain (especially since Chinese companies aren't actually making that much money off the top). Massachusetts tried to onshore subway train manufacturing and ended up with trains riddled with manufacturing defects. California tried to do HSR development and, well... Stuff happened. Britain is still struggling to get their HSR project off the ground and it's already blown through the budget.

It might make a project in 20 years 20% cheaper, but it'll make the current project maybe 500% more expensive. I don't think that's worth it.

I can't imagine they're actually planning to tunnel through mountains for an initial HSR network, right? That shit is insanely expensive and it would make much more sense to just run flights+a roundabout HSR route for that connection.