I feel like this is one of the many places on the internet where people see “China” and instinctively feel the need to give some variation of cocktail party nationalism. I’m hoping HN can tolerate a little nuance here: acknowledging that China did a smart thing isn’t an endorsement of autocracy. In freedom-loving countries we should figure out if their ideas are compatible with our values on the merits of each idea itself.

To be more direct, the ability to build infrastructure that benefits a region or the whole country is entirely orthogonal from the style of government. It’s a matter of vision and political will. The US built the interstate highway system and plenty of other infrastructure projects.

The downside of infrastructure projects, aside from environmental, is that they can sometimes be huge sources of corruption and waste, like bridges to nowhere. This happens in all styles of government.

" is entirely orthogonal "

I think it is somewhat separate from the style of government, but not entirely orthogonal. It is obviously easier to build infrastructure and to keep building it for decades and decades, if you can disregard much of the popular backlash.

The golden age of Western infrastructure building ended with people electing all sorts of NIMBY or Green-adjacent politicians who imposed a lot of bureaucratic rules on further development.

Such a thing is basically impossible either in China or in places like Saudi Arabia (cough NEOM, cough). There, you can either try to "petition the court" somehow (only works for certain people and their interests), or, in much more risky way, try to cause some unrest and hope that the authorities will back down instead of responding by crushing you.

It was similar in late stage Communist Eastern Bloc; and the comrades were rightly afraid, because the eco-movement played some role in bringing down the system.