Someone on Wikipedia added the following a few days ago:
China's HSR system as a whole, however, has incurred massive financial losses.[9] In terms of annual operating revenues and expenditures, only six lines break even while the rest have huge losses.[10] Most of the newer lines suffer from low passenger volumes, as many of their stations are located well outside centers of metro areas and without direct local highway nor light rail connections. Officials have used high-speed rail construction primarily to drive up land value for land sales, especially in third and fourth-tier cities, rather than prioritizing convenience and affordability of ordinary travelers.[11] As of the end of 2023, China's HSR system has an accumulated debt of $839 billion due to opaque financing by local governments.[12]
Here are the sources:
If you look at the sources, [9] is from the "libertarian" Reason Foundation which is pro-car and anti-transit, and the editor presented it as an outright fact. [10] is not true (it's also a dead link for an article from WSJ which is questionably framed); more than six lines are profitable to some extent and the "huge losses" are the exception and not the norm.
What is most problematic is [11], which has been thoroughly rebutted here (this person has great English-language coverage of transit in China, please check them out!).
The person doesn't even acknowledge the controversy that each of the these sources have. I wonder if there's an agenda going on, or if the liberal narratives have been repeated so much such that people just unironically believe them.
It really should be sovereign spending tbf. Like, America's bloated healthcare and military is Federal spending (ofc, no one cares about 'losses' for military since you know, it's the military). When you use non-sovereign entities, you are borrowing from commercial banks (even if state owned), commercial banks give out loans which are supposed to be paid back so the sovereign (central bank + ministry of finance) don't have to recapitalize it (which raises fiscal deficits which the central gov don't like due to 'sound' finance). Obviously, HSR has a lot of utility however the financing debt should be transferred to the Central Govt, I don't care about profitability in money terms, many of the good parts of HSR don't show up on balance sheets. i think they should stop using accounting trickery and have it be an item on Central Govt budget, although the reason they do it this way is to make national debt and fiscal deficit appear lower (for silly reasons).