In contrast, IIUC, landlines are basically not a thing in large parts of China because China adopted the telephone as a mass-market service so late that they had the option of making cellular-telephone network so reliable and so ubiquituous as to eliminate the need to run a wired telephone network to every residence, and IIUC China took that option.
The fact that China is full of cars is (because Chinese policy makers are sensible practical people) at least some evidence that the alternative you advocate is not as great as you think it is.
To quote from https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jiBFC7DcCrZjGmZnJ/ ("Conservation of Expected Evidence"):
>So if you claim that “no sabotage” is evidence for the existence of a Japanese-American Fifth Column, you must conversely hold that seeing sabotage would argue against a Fifth Column. If you claim that “a good and proper life” is evidence that a woman is a witch, then an evil and improper life must be evidence that she is not a witch. If you argue that God, to test humanity’s faith, refuses to reveal His existence, then the miracles described in the Bible must argue against the existence of God.