NIMBYs opposed to windpower seems like a tale as old as time. Case in point, read Don Quixote, old man is so angry at wind turbines he actually tries to joust them through

The irony is even bigger in the Netherlands: our proudest most beautiful national icon: old wind power.

New wind power however it's deemed ugly and 'visual pollution' even though it's the same thing and clean energy.

I've heard people around me saying they make people sick. By spinning, I guess?

But if they lose power for 20 minutes god save you from their wrath

That’s exactly what happens in China. If you have a leasehold to the land, and the government eminent domains you, you get compensation. You can’t fight the eminent domain, but the compensation is usually generous.

There is world of difference between displacing a million people and doing little to help them along, and telling a small group of farmers to fuck off or get rolled over. It's not either / or. It's that in the western world, we attribute too much to land ownership because it's deeply tied to peoples personal economy and nebulous concepts like freedom. I think that's insane. Decomodify housing and ban the trading of land as a speculative market, and I think you'll see people give less of a shit about it.

Here in Denmark, farmers (and suburbanites pretending to be rural, let's be real) have an immensely disproportionate amount of power to veto infrastructure projects that benefit us all for the dumbest reasons, but I can't veto the parking lots they demand be built on my street even though it only benefits them.

Last month, some-200 farmers got off their subsidized ass to bitch and whine about how some electric poles off in the distance would, and I quote, "ruin my life". https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/niels-bliver-nabo-til-44-meter-hoeje-elmaster-vi-faar-oedelagt-vores-livsvaerdi

Read about the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. Over a million people were forcibly displaced from their homes as a result. Many cities, towns, and villages were completely destroyed.

The US did this all the time back when we actually built things.

Exactly. Sure, China gets shit done. But it comes with not giving a fuck about a lot of their own people, a lot of the time.

And the advantages of the autocratic approach only show up for slices of time. Eventually, elites will give up on development if it impedes their control. All dictatorships slide into feudal monarchy over time (see the last several thousand years).

If your land, serving you and your family of 6, could serve a thousand people instead via infrastructure or urbanization, then yes, I think the government has the right to uproot and resettle you. Obviously, on the condition that you are compensated and helped along, which I know doesn't happen in either country, but clinging to ideals isn't helping solve the issue.

This source (pages 124-128) for the Wikipedia page on eminent domain makes China and the USA both seem abysmal when it comes to reasonable compensation for seized property.

I think but an not sure that China does that too.

When you develop a knee-jerk reaction to phrases like "Chinese propaganda" and "Russian propaganda", you really open yourself up to being manipulated by them.

Why‽ There's no sign of this subway failing at all. Rail enthusiasts everywhere praise Asian subways.