Another thing they do is not a public/private build out. China owns the companies building the roads. It gets to set the price, design, wages, etc. The reason

Another thing they do is not a public/private build out. China owns the companies building the roads. It gets to set the price, design, wages, etc. The reason things are expensive in the US is privatization. It should be super obvious why. The contractors we hire are super incentivized to drag things out and bloat costs. They make more money by doing less. And since the gov is footing the bill, no harm no foul. It gets even worse when you take corruption into account. Because now the mayor can get nice kickbacks for awarding contracts to their drinking buddies who also are mysteriously campaign donors. Not saying corruption doesn't happen in china, it does, but not generally for infrastructure things. Instead, it's the drinking buddies being put in charge of the projects. One of the dumbest parts of Reaganomics was removing the public ability to maintain public infrastructure.