“China’s city building is amazing, while the best of US cities was built in the last century.”
China has a number of ghost cities where few, if any, live. Buildings built just a few years ago are deteriorating rapidly. Bridges collapse, sink holes appear in streets and buildings fall over. Tofu-dreg construction is what the Chinese call it.
China has over a 100 cities of a million or more people. China has 5 of the 10 tallest buildings in the world (all built in the last 10 years). The “ghost cities” are a rounding error in their massive advancement in urbanization.
We have ghost cities too, not because we are building too much, but because we are letting our cities collapse. China is running into its own central planning problems, but don’t discount their ability to build, including for war. Last thing we want to do is get into a war with a country that has 4x the population and 2x the industrial capacity.