UK is rather smaller making the need for high speed less.  it is also rather fuller and the space to build lines and stations is not easy to come by. 

This is true Paul, but this didn't stop the UK trying to develop a new High Speed service but not achieving the aims.

My understanding (admittedly from watching YouTube videos, which may be biased) is that the Chinese high speed rail is too expensive and seriously under-used.

Given what a financial fiasco HS2 has turned out to be, I doubt there's any appetite for an HS3, HS4, and so on.

Paul Wilson said:

High speed railway is a catalyst for transformation. 

Hi Paul,

You haven't really explained this point, which is the important one. Could you explain what transformation you mean, and why you think high speed railway is a catalyst for it?

That said, I will say that my personal view is that what the UK needs is better rail connectivity rather than high speed rail - we were already seeing a drift away from city-centred employment before covid, and the lockdown experience seems to be increasing that trend. My guess is that the idea that rail links should mainly go from city centre to city centre (the essence of high speed rail) will tend to diminish. 

(I emphasise the word "personal" because I work in the rail industry, on everything from light rail to high speed, but I wouldn't want this to be taken as the view of my employers or clients.)

I believe current research is still showing that journey speed is not UK rail travellers biggest concern? IIRC reliability, quality of information, clear pricing, and comfort were all rated as bigger concerns? And getting freight off the roads is another set of problems again, but again speed doesn't seem to be the biggest issue here.

OK, I know I am glossing over a bit the fact that high speed lines can increase capacity on the network, which in turn can help address connectivity and reliability concerns, and provide more freight capacity. Whether it's the best and most proportionate way of resolving those issues is a very complex matter which I'm certainly not qualified to comment on. And it's one which it is phenomenally difficult to get an unbiased answer to, a large part of the rail and construction industry makes an awful lot of money out of high speed rail - which is not to say that it's not the right thing to do in the right circumstances, just that getting to the truth of the value argument can be challenging.

I will also say that personally I've never compared (or felt the urge to compare) the UK rail infrastructure to China, both the political and geographical situations are so different that I've found it very difficult to ever draw useful comparisons. (What would be interesting would be to compare China to the USA, similar geographies but very, very different attitudes to rail.) Comparing the UK to South Korea I've found much more interesting, you may want to take a look at their approach to rail, there may be some very interesting lessons we could learn from there.

Thanks,

Andy

One aspect will be historical - as railways started here we've been building railways for 150 years, so China will be playing catchup to some extent.

As for HS 2 here, the issue (from a Northern perspective) is not speed as such - but a desperate need for more rail capacity. There are plenty of projects from more slow local passenger services to shifting freight off the roads, that are blocked by the lack of rail space. We need more rail - and if you're going to build a new railway you might as well do it to modern standards and then you get the higher speeds anyway (not quite for free of course, but for not a huge extra cost). Marketing/political types seem to like to push the high speed benefits, but miss the underlying point, which might explain the bizarre decision making to some extent.

   - Andy.

I'd agree apart from your first sentence - China have been building railways for 150 years. (And I'm not referring to the UK built railways in China that were earlier than that.) And unlike the UK, they didn't decide in the 1960s to dismantle them in favour of roads - it could be argued that because of that they may now be 60 years ahead of us and that we might be the ones playing catch up!