Pure speculation on my part: The average Chinese citizen now has a higher standard of living, so the need for mobility increases. So you’ll have both more car owners and the need for railways, which do help reduce the need for cars, but also don’t fully overlap in use cases. You aren’t just going from people swapping their car for railways, but also giving many people that had no car to start with the option to choose between getting one or using trains for their travels. Which is good, but in absolute numbers you’d still see more cars.
Similar to how China is adding both a massive amount of renewable energy and at the same time still building coal power plants, simply because the overall need for energy is still growing.
Pure speculation on my part: The average Chinese citizen now has a higher standard of living, so the need for mobility increases. So you’ll have both more car owners and the need for railways, which do help reduce the need for cars, but also don’t fully overlap in use cases. You aren’t just going from people swapping their car for railways, but also giving many people that had no car to start with the option to choose between getting one or using trains for their travels. Which is good, but in absolute numbers you’d still see more cars.
Similar to how China is adding both a massive amount of renewable energy and at the same time still building coal power plants, simply because the overall need for energy is still growing.