Graham Allison

7/ Answer: More than 30,000 miles. That’s 65% of all the high-speed rail track in the world.

6/ How many miles of high-speed rail has China completed since then?

4/ Answer: More than a decade. Construction began in 2015 with the first 150-mile section scheduled for completion in 2022. That target has now shifted to 2032. Regarding the remaining 350 miles between LA and SF, and a Phase 2 connecting to Sacramento, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has given up projecting completion dates. Many Californians have now concluded that mañana is a euphemism for never.

3/ How late is America’s only high-speed rail project, which (if all of it gets built) will cover 750 miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco and on to Sacramento?

1/ China Challenge: Believe it or Not* How late is Chinas high speed rail? *As part of an effort to improve our understanding of China, I will continue to offer another “Believe It or Not” about China each week. Readers are invited to send along candidates for the list.

2/ Last week a @FinancialTimes story announced: “An ambitious high-speed rail project linking Poland and the Baltic states will probably be a decade late.” The 750-mile line that had been promised by 2030 will be delayed until at least 2040. ft.com/content/0fe9d0…

3/ So for those analysts who declared soon after the War began that China’s large imports of Gulf oil made it “especially susceptible” to an energy shortfall, they should have stopped to ask: Compared to what other sources of energy? And compared to which other countries? nytimes.com/2026/03/03/bus…

2/ As the table below suggests, not China. America’s Asian allies are much more dependent than China on energy that arrives by ship through the Strait of Hormuz.

1/ Whose oil and gas supplies are suffering most from the Iran War?

8/ Therefore: as I argued in The Boston Globe in 2021, on current trajectories, the Green Future is destined to be Red. bostonglobe.com/2021/10/29/opi…

7/ In all, China has over 20x more public chargers than the US.

1/ Tracking the EV Race: Who is Super-Charged?

8/ On the other hand, as Chart 3 shows, the US bilateral trade deficit with China in 2025 decreased by 30%. While Americans bought less from China, they bought more from others, with Mexico, Canada, and Taiwan topping that list of top sources of US imports.

7/ At the same time, as Chart 2 shows, China recorded the biggest trade surplus in its history at $1.2 trillion.

1/ Trump’s year of tariffs produced a new high... for whom?