Consider this and weep
China is the size of the USA? WTF
holy shit we would be FUCKED if we tried a hot war lmao
:jesse-wtf:
shit looks small on the map
damn China must have been a fucking disaster pre-communism if Japan dunked on them like that
edit: bruh Australia is fucking bigger than the USA :thinking-about-it:
China must have been a fucking disaster pre-communism if Japan dunked on them like that
it was barely even a state for a decent period - after the downfall of the Qing dynasty, the first attempt at democracy went to shit, since as a compromise they had to appoint a general from the previous government to be the president, and he tried to reestablish the monarchy with him as the emperor, causing the whole country to dissolve into literal warlord states. The KMT under Kai-Shek officially "united" the country by the '30s, but in practice they didn't actually subjugate all the warlords, they had to cut deals and compromises with some of them, so it still wasn't a completely centralized state.
Additionally, Tibet wasn't part of China yet, Xinjiang was the one warlord state that the KMT never managed to get, Manchuria and a part of Inner Mongolia were under Japanese control even before the war proper, so in reality China was a lot smaller, and even within that territory you still had powerful warlord sub-states like the Ma and Yunnan cliques. It was a complete mess, it's really a testament to the power of communism what achievements were attained from this starting point.
edit: bruh Australia is fucking bigger than the USA
USA is bigger than Australia
It’s just the CCP doing a populism to stay in power. I won’t be fooled.
I’m planning a trip to China next year and I was looking at the train times between major cities. The fact that I can go from Beijing to Shanghai (like a thousand miles) in 4 hours for right around $100 is insane. In the US going that far would cost double or triple that and take one or two days.
What level of Western leftist am I if the trains alone are like 30% of the reason I'd want to live in China?
I’ve been thinking for years that my dream is to live somewhere I can walk/use public transportation to get to work, home, shops and so on. And couple that with the very real improvement China is doing (I’ve never know a US government that did anything other than war and highways) it seems like the place for me to live.
Considering all the time on either side of a flight (driving to the airport, parking, security, waiting for the flight, boarding, take off, etc), planes are really only faster if the train ride is more than four hours. And that isn't even considering how much more enjoyable it is to ride trains.
That’s really cool. Also yeah that’s something I’m looking forward to if the trip turns out to be possible is the train ride.
Plus you can actually do stuff on trains because they're so chill and comfy.
Yeah, listening to the bells and blips as someone three rows up plays majiang without headphones is so awesome. And China train meals are the worst. At least in other countries you can get off and buy food from vendors on the platform.
That simply does not match my experience with Chinese high speed rail at all. Why do you hate China so much and tell these lies?
Seriously? You've never been trapped on a train with some kid playing a tablet game without earphones? Or had the awful box meals? If you're going to say the box meals are good...Chinese people don't even think that.
do you expect them to be accepting travellers by then or are you going for work or something (if you don't mind my asking)? i thought i heard somewhere that they weren't expecting to open up again fully until like 2025 but i haven't really looked into it much, but i'd love to visit as soon as i could.
I’m just in the money saving phase but this is all predicated on whatever the situation around summer of next year is. I have some distant family there but afaik that isn’t enough rn.
Before Deng Xiaoping hijacked the people’s revolution onto the capitalist road.
Considering what happened to all of the other socialist countries around 1989, any analysis that doesn't conclude that Dengism saved Chinese Communism is wrong on its face.
Bruh, most of the train from Beijing South Station to Shanghai Hongqiao Station is around 4 and a half hours
Do people actually say you cant do trains because America is "too big"?
Yes, I’ve had relatives say this exact thing and if I mention that China is the same size they’d say something like “we our population is more spread out” like that fucking matters. we also have the benefit of most of our cities were built around rail and aren’t several thousand years old.
The US population is spread out but also in dense cities, which is absolutely perfect for rail. Just connect the cities.
"Connecting the country is bad actually and when the devious orientals do it, it can only be done for reasons of GENOCIDE and COLONIZATION!!!"
:PIGPOOPBALLS:
spurs to Tibet and Xinjiang to enable Han colonization
lol fuck right off.
https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/9wBnDWDF7c.png
https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/03/opinions/smart-high-speed-trains-america/index.html
Ok I was thinking like wtf there's one line going to Xinjiang and nothing else in the entire western half? They've gotta quit slackin, lol
There's nothing in the western half. The Heihe–Tengchong Line divides the area of China into two roughly equal parts with contrasting population densities. As of 2015, 94% of China's population live east of the line, in 43% of its area, whereas 57% of the area of the country is west of the line, but only 6% of the population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heihe%E2%80%93Tengchong_Line
the insane thing is depending who you ask the US is still operating more rail than china (slower, almost exclusively freight), and used to have twice as much track. There isn't a community in america you can go to built before the 60s that doesn't have a defunct rail connection. "Too big" is so mind-numbingly ignorant it makes me see red
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7hdo9tL6u0
imagine how much people would fucking love this if it came thru their town. or if Elon Musk claimed to have invented it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_xosO7IfQ8
they are very good at building trains
I love watching these and thinking "what the fuck has the US done in my lifetime?" :agony:
This is the pinnacle of American passenger rail: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela
Their claim to fame is going up to 150 mph for a 30-mile stretch. It's a single line that goes from Boston to DC, hitting stops in between. It costs about $100 after fees and crap if the trains are 20% full, prices automatically increase as that goes up. 50% full? Well now it's around $225.
so building trains is rather useless
That's why they built them, communism also bad at resource management
But that's because Xi threatened people to build the railroad, otherwise he would summon Cupcakke and she would smack their asses like a drum
ARENT LONG DISTANCES WHAT TRAINS ARE FUCKING FOR?! HOW DID ANYBODY EVER ARGUE THIS?!
le ebil CCP don't just let people go to Xinjiang, they're covering up a genocide!!!
you can literally get a train there :traingang:
I have not seen the blue of the sky in over 6 months help
I do have a rad bicycle tho so maybe it evens out
