HSR wasn't funded by the government however, at least not completely. Well, this is where it gets complicated:
China Railway is a SOE, so it is technically the government. It took out a lot of debt to do HSR, and technically that isn't considered public debt and is rather listed as corporate debt (if SOE debt was considered public debt, China's public debt would obviously be much higher than the USA). Anyways, see https://www.ft.com/content/ca28f58a-955d-11e8-b747-fb1e803ee... for a better read.
Highways in China are mostly financed in similar ways actually, which is why all of the newer ones have pretty high tolls.
I am very aware that, as I am native Chinese. CRS is SOE, but when they constructed each individual HSR project, they got the investment from local governments, as each local governments knew that HSR would greatly benefit the economy. Just like HSR project between Beijing and Shanghai, which got the investment from seven local governments, if you can read Chinese: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/京沪高速铁路
The whole project has 12 major shareholders, including 7 local governments.
And also a whole lot of loans that have to be paid back somehow....they didn’t bond this, they got huge loans from all of the state banks. If the government is just going to pay for HSR, they haven’t put that money on the books yet.
China Railway is a SOE, so it is technically the government. It took out a lot of debt to do HSR, and technically that isn't considered public debt and is rather listed as corporate debt (if SOE debt was considered public debt, China's public debt would obviously be much higher than the USA). Anyways, see https://www.ft.com/content/ca28f58a-955d-11e8-b747-fb1e803ee... for a better read.
Highways in China are mostly financed in similar ways actually, which is why all of the newer ones have pretty high tolls.