[elpalek]

Can you please elaborate on the Chinese advantage?

[dangus]

The network is massive and the average and top speeds are very fast.

China has more high speed rail than the rest of the world combined.

[elpalek]

China's land area is approximately 25 times of Japan, def has a bigger network. But the top speed is comparable in current generations[1] except the Maglev.

1. https://www.railway-technology.com/features/the-10-fastest-h...

[dangus]

Comparable and essentially identical for sure, but 30 km/hr slower is slower.

[tirant]

Compared to their size, Spain and Japan have a largest high speed network than China.

And tickets, specially in Spain, are very cheap.

[dangus]

I would think that the vast amount of central/Western land in China that is sparsely populated might skew this statistic quite a bit, where Spain and Japan don't have that at the same scale.