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That is a very old number and anyways only comes from consumers who are not consuming but saving for emergency health care, or increasingly unaffordable housing. China desperately needs for its consumers to actually consume to move away from an export oriented economy, which is especially sensitive to trade friction. So yes, you are talking about China's biggest problem (inability to consume what they produce) that even the Chinese leadership has acknowledged is a huge problem. Whether china can afford this or not is less relevant than "bang for the buck", china has already built out lots of HSR, some of it very lightly utilized (my own trip from Beijing to a city in south Hunan, the train was mostly empty most of the time). China builds mostly as a stimulus program, because if consumers aren't consuming its one of the only tools they have, but also focuses on flashy projects that they can brag about in articles like this. However, much of this infrastructure is going to be underutilized for decades, while really needed infrastructure, like adequate flooding drainage, doesn't provide enough "face" to be considered instead. So every year, we see pictures of flooded out cities...but at least you can get to them quickly on empty trains! |