The Chinese build a 50000 km high speed railway network in 18 years. The first high speed train was in 2008. If there is a will, there is a way. Infrastructure benefits the people.
In California for example the high speed railway was authorized in 2008 for only 795 kilometers long. The project is expected to be completed between 2031 and 2033. So in the same time frame, China build 49205 additional kilometers of track.
In western countries, everything and everyone needs to be consulted and 99% of the time a court case follows because of some animal found or it is too close to houses or whatever shit people think of, causing massive delays. Than of course there are the changes in government. Think about the Biden infrastructure bill that got scraped like the second day the current regime took over.
Again with the propanda. China is not a dictatorship. People actually have a lot of rights and power.
Even more than in the US, strangely when it comes to privacy for example. China has a system almost stricter than the European GDPR. American citizens can only dream of this sort of protection because your government is run by tech lobbyists.
Anyway you’re making excuses for the inability of ‘the greatest country on earth’ to even build proper infrastructure for the people. Not only high speed rail, but the state of the roads, bridges and other crucial infrastructure is deplorable.