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Arable land is only to grow food.

> Most of China lives in one third of the country

Right, so U.S. has PLENTY of space ;)

I’ve been to rural China (village where my family and ancestors are), there’s tons of space to modernize and build still, China def not out of livable space.

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Arable land probably has to do more with carrying capacity in terms of agriculture and water resources. Yes, you could build a huge city on the Tibetan plateau but you would have to truck in a lot of stuff to keep people alive.

Even the rural areas, you have to decide whether to keep them growing food (low density for China) or turn them into dense cites. Do too much of the latter and your cities starve. But you can’t really build cities on land unsuited for farming, since again you have to truck a lot of stuff in from far away.

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