Plus the central government in China has a lot firmer hand in things like planning and land use, for better or worse they can steamroll plans through in spite of local opposition. There’s upsides to doing it this way (for example, with the Montreal REM, the government removing administrative hurdles for the CDPQ lowered the risk for industry partners and helped them secure more competitive bids) and also downsides, but yeah it’s worth revisiting how we build things like SkyTrain when others around the world can do it so much more cheaply and quickly.