good tents are worth the money. The heavy canvas ones are great if not too far from a car, but too heavy to carry far.
bluGill
If you don't have a sensor then that is cheaper in the short term, but it quickly wastes a lot of energy running when the humidity is under control. For a dehumidifier you need more energy to get lower so the room well generally will be fairly consistent not too low humidity even as outside humidity changes, but you will use a lot more energy than a system that turns off when humidity is good.
there are purely mechanical systems that used to be used. However they have some weird machining requirements so it isn't clear they are cheaper than a digital system (this partially depends on volume - make more and the machining gets cheaper per unit). The digital system is as we already have established is very cheap and lets you put buttons and LEDs on the unit for a few cents more - this is far more valuable to marketing than the possible savings (if any!) from a mechanical control.
Almost no cars, trucks, or tractors are steam based anymore. I believe most ships are ICE as well, not to mention rockets, and animal/muscle power. As such I'd need a very deep analysis of the situation to believe any claim. (deep because in an ICE a large part of the power comes from burning fuel producing steam, so we can start debating how much of an ICE is steam - have fun).
In any case my local electric utility generated more power from wind than all customers used last year, so I can make a good claim most of my power isn't from steam. If your utility isn't in the same situations or close you should be demanding they get with the times.
China was a really backward country 50 years ago. I expect that China has paved a lot of roads which are still in good shape. Europe by contrast has had paved roads for a long time and those older roads via normal wear and tear are wearing out. The question then becomes when do you patch, recover, or replace - this is in order of both cost and how nice the road is after. Give China a few more decades and their roads will become less smooth because it isn't worth the cost to make them perfect.