This is a truly incredible article that criticizes China's plans to build high speed rail to under-served parts of China by taking the angle that it won't make money, and therefore is stupid. Amazing that infrastructure projects that help rural Chinese gain access to a high speed rail network is criticized from the angle of profit-making when making a profit is never the point with infrastructure projects. The NYC subway system wasn't built to "make a profit," but that doesn't mean it was a bad idea. But China bad so somehow them building a crazy amount of high speed rail is bad.
That's how you know the collapse of US imperium is imminent. When we stop being able to have the imagination for large infrastructure projects and actively criticize others for trying, you know we're fucked.
I don't even think it's a matter of imagination, which is definitely still there. The class contradictions have risen to such an extent that the bourgeois state is incapable of even achieving the minor common goods needed to perpetuate itself.