[jotm]

> China is seems to be successful at large scale construction projects in a way that we can not replicate in the west

Are they? Considering that their population is higher than the whole of North America + EU + Russia combined, wouldn't it be fair to compare it that way? Sure, it's one country as opposed to several, but still, the population plays a huge role in this "amazing construction at scale".

[bllguo]

can you flesh this out, why exactly does a larger population mean more efficient construction projects? i don't follow

seems to me other factors like economics and government structure are more important, don't think a 4x larger US would be building faster and more cheaply

[jotm]

I guess what I'm saying is you can't compare what "China" is doing to most western countries, which have a fraction of the population, so of course there will be fewer reactors, fewer roads, less housing, less production.

I'd say it's more fair to compare it to a region of equal population. People actually do stuff, and the more of them (especially educated ones) there are, the more stuff will get done.

People are the biggest resource these days, which western countries realized a long time ago (or maybe it's the other way around, western countries created this system?). Hence, immigration heavily in favour of the best from other parts of the world.

And higher concentrations of people are more productive and effective. Think cities vs rural areas.

After accounting for that and comparing, if your region (clump of people) is still losing, then you might have a real problem and should take notes from the other group.