[nh2]

It doesn't have much to do with "China being an actual country".

Germany alone is also an actual country and the trains inside it's borders are super slow.

In China and Japan, many long distance trains get 320 km/h average speed!

The German ICE "machine" could theoretically also do that speed but there are barely any tracks where this is possible, so the average speed is around 3x slower.

In France and Italy it is much better. TGV and Frecciarossa trains usually operate much closer to their specced speeds.

[em-bee]

germany is making the big mistake of mixed use tracks. in china high speed tracks are dedicated to high speed trains, and a high speed connection means dedicated high speed tracks for the whole trip. germany is creating a patchwork of high speed routes thinking that this is enough to make high speed trains work.

[RandomThoughts3]

The slowness regarding rolling out things like ETCS, ATS and standardised European infrastructure as everything to do with Europe not being an actual united political entity. As you rightfully pointed, some EU members rail strategy is very dubious.