Let China build the California HSR network. Actually, I'd be more than willing to let the Chinese finance it, built it and supply the rolling stock and man the trains. For all I care, they could post the timetables in Chinese and make all of the station announcements in Mandarin dialect. I wouldn't even care if the personnel were all Chinese nationals, working at Chinese wage scales to Chinese work rules. Of course, if the Chinese wish to pay the upfront costs of a $100 billion system and pay the annual subsidies, which might be in the billions by the time the system is complete, I'd let them. Yes indeed, why should the federal taxpayers have to the delusional CHSR system? Let China pay for it!
Of course, we're really talking about American money going to pay for Chinese jobs. At the moment, China must have a tremendously overbuilt rolling stock industry and there is a desperate need to find export markets. Of course, China is in competition with every other country that has too much passenger railroad rolling stock capacity, such as Spain, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea.....the list goes on and on. Basically, there are too many passenger rolling stock producers worldwide, and contrary to the uninformed belief, this is not a growth industry on a global level. Actually, HSR isn't very "high tech" in a meaningful sense either.