China has been able to build high-speed rail cheaply because it has standardized designs and excellent project management. The average cost to construct a high-speed line in China is about $33 million per mile, which is 40 percent cheaper than in Europe and 80 percent cheaper than California’s effort, which has seen costs balloon to $192 million per mile. By taking a broader view, the World Bank suggests that China’s high-speed rail has delivered substantial benefits beyond ticket revenues, which includes saving time for users, increasing intellectual and business exchanges, reducing road accidents and traffic congestion, and lowering carbon emissions.

China now has the capacity to produce around sixty million cars a year (one-third electric, two-thirds combustion), out of an annual global market of around ninety million cars sold. China’s domestic market absorbs less than half of its production. China produces so much in part because every province wants to be an automotive manufacturing hub.

Never mind that China has gotten less growth from each unit of new investment since its big infrastructure binge of 2008. The Communist Party continues to build because it’s full of engineers and also because Marxist-Leninists don’t want to cede economic agency to the people.

China would be better off if it built less and built better. But we should also resist judging it by the standards of the United States, which is frankly underprovisioned in public infrastructure. Because there is perhaps one thing worse than an overactive state that can’t stop moving— and that is a state that can’t move at all.

Environmental reviews continue to delay renewable projects. In 2024, the United States had 42 megawatts of operational offshore wind production undergoing permitting review, most of which are waiting on environmental analyses to be completed. Meanwhile, China is building most of the world’s renewable energy. In 2023, while the United States added 6 gigawatts of new wind installations, China added 76. That year, China built two-thirds of the world’s wind and solar plants, as well as four times more than the rest of the G-7 group of rich countries put together.

The lawyerly society is great at protecting the wealthy. The engineering state has a limited tolerance for how long infrastructure can be held up. It’s barely imaginable that a group of wealthy people would be able to use legal means to force the cancellation of clean energy projects in China. If it is really going to be a climate emergency, then the rest of the world will need to move as fast as the engineering state.

And the focus on building is winning China some degree of support in developing countries as well.

Exporting China’s infrastructure is core to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), one of Xi’s signature initiatives. Chinese firms have taken their expertise in building roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, dams, and power plants abroad. And the sometimes also bring the sorts of surveillance systems and censorship tools that find eager customers among autocratic leaders. They have gone on a spending spree overseas, with $1 trillion worth of loans outstanding in 150 countries.