I never claimed that it would stop it. I claimed that it would reduce it, which it does. Something like induced demand on street just brings more people to take the car and does nothing against congestion etc. Giving a good rail system encourages people to take the train.

Also, in regard to your experience in China I did some digging and found this:

-2,1 billion rail passengers passengers (2013), growth of 5.5% per year between 2000 and 2013

-Bejing-Tianjin HSR: 16 million in first year (2008)

-Fares vary between 0.045$/passenger km for 200-250km/h and 0.77$/per passenger km for 300-350km/h (which actually is more expensive than Germany (0.34$/p.km) and France (0.24-0.31$/p.km) so the argument "it is only used by the poor kinda falls short)

-Rail passenger amount grew by 7.6% annually between 2008 & 2013

• The two busiest lines carried 100 million each in 2014 -rail trips are almost double the amount than air trips in 2013

-for short trips (<300km) cars or busses are competitive because HSR stations are a decent way away from the town centre

• Rail traffic grew by 39% between 2008 and 2014 while conventional traffic grew by 1.5%

-According to a survey from May 2013 the income range on the Changchun-Jilin line was at about 4,300$/m (70% reported an income of below 5,000$/m), Tianjin-Jinan between 6,700$ and 4,500$/m (50%reported an income of less than 5000$/m) so again.

• The most profitable route (Shanghai-Beijing) brought in 1 billion$ in revenue in 2015

-Most people are actually not able to afford HSR in China (at least were in 2015)

-for trips of 500km or less air companies were forced to lower Fares or cancel flights because of the HSR

• total income in 2021 was about 705 million USD (56.5% lower than 2019)

-Due to Covid 19 and strict lock downs profits plummeted 159% to a loss of 4.4 billion USD

-The HSR system has a total of 1.9 billion passengers annually.

For the sake of the argument I only focused myself on HSR and passenger travel in comparison.

References https://www.statista.com/topics/7534/high-speed-rail-in-china/#topicOverview

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-high-speed-rail-development-worldwide

http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/EAP/China/high_speed-rail-%20in-china-en.pdf

Edit: When you said only poorer people use the HSR you were probably referring to the conventional rail (200-250km/h) and not 300-350km/h