U.S. have many types of roads - from Freeway to Highway to main road to secondary road to bi-way to dirt road to just name a few.
Highways also have U.S. Highway (largely maintained by Federal government) and State Highway. Then you also have state roads, county roads, etc etc etc
Rich states have better roads, and poor states naturally have worse roads, even on Interstate Freeway you can pass thru sections have drastically different surface conditions.
I wholeheartedly agree about how Chinese living in California tend to give misleading information about U.S. as a whole country.