I mean they have better conditions and wages than the average ag worker in the US, let alone prison workers. There’s plenty of slavery by another name in this world, but this is a poor example.
The fact that they’re putting forum results ahead of web seems like they’re just throwing in the towel on having useful web results that aren’t just searching thing+reddit/stackoverflow.
I can’t find any English-language papers covering the protests that did any actual journalism.
There’s quite a few that covered the protests, but only in service of the typical “ccp bad, the people yearn for freedom” story, so they didn’t bother with such details.
Maglevs tend to have wheels that get deployed on approach, so I don’t think that’s a big issue.
I don’t understand what this is addressing
China’s HSR has an issue in that it doesn’t go to the city centers, you still have to take a metro or bus to get there.
I can’t imagine how difficult it’s gonna be getting land for maglev. Shanghai’s maglev was supposed to connect the Hongqiao and Pudong airports, but they got NIMBY’d by property owners who wanted a bigger setback and used FUDD to organize protests.
Before watching the video, I was thinking all maglevs were just gagetbahns since there’s little difference in how maglevs are used vs conventional HSR, but 380 mph and 100+ mile long tracks make a qualitative difference as it competes with aircraft after you consider boarding, taxiing, time to get to cruising altitude, etc. This is especially important given how much CO2 per passenger mile small aircraft generate.
Also if the US can spend trillions on wars, and has a similarly sized economy, I’m sure the Chinese can afford socially beneficial projects like this even if ticket prices never cover operating costs.