[timr]

Yes, granted. But again, the Hokuriku line was "normal", and was still 10x the cost of the Chinese line.

The point of citing both was definitely to show that you can have a pretty large variance in costs, even if you're the world expert in building these things in earthquake-prone areas.

[rangibaby]

Japanese HSR is engineered to a very high standard and has also never had a fatal accident in over 50 years of operation.

Chinese HSR had a fatal one within three years of the line opening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision