Infrastructure boom

There have been a couple recent additions to China’s rapidly expanding infrastructure. The largest building in the world is Beijing’s new airport terminal, which opened in February.

Besides the new airport terminal, “China is home … to the world’s largest shopping mall (the seven-million-square-foot South China Mall); the longest sea-crossing bridge (it stretches 36 kilometers, or about 22 miles, over part of the East China Sea); the largest hydroelectric dam (the Three Gorges project); and the highest railway (an engineering marvel that crosses the Tibetan permafrost 16,000 feet above sea level, the so-called roof of the world).”

The bridge mentioned in the article was the lead story in newspapers a couple weeks ago after it opened on May 1st. It stretches 36 kilometers across Hangzhou Bay, connecting Shanghai with the port city of Ningbo to the south. The two cities, by the way, are the first and fifth largest ports in the world, respectively, as measured by tons of cargo.

Before the bridge was built, the cities were four hours apart by train or bus, but now the trips is only 80 km instead of the 400 km route around Hangzhou Bay. The quicker travel time was not fully realized at first, however, as the bridge was inundated with private cars over the holiday weekend and traffic slowed significantly as people stopped on the bridge to take pictures (only in China!).

These marquee projects are just the surface of China’s extensive infrastructure building. New transportation links are going up everywhere. It’s hard to believe how much Taicang, Changzhou, and Shanghai have visibly changed in the nearly nine months that I have been here (not just the new buildings, but all of the smooth, wide new streets with bike lanes are really nice). Likewise, it is simply hard to imagine the challenges of modernizing a country of 1.3 billion people and the construction required to drive (and keep up with) annual economic growth of 10%.

Although a lot of it is shoddy and hastily built (the walls in the brand-new dorm and recently built apartment are already falling apart), the large projects are certainly world-class. In a survey of airports that I saw somewhere last year ranked many Asian airports near the top (Hong Kong's and Singapore's were #1 and 2). Meanwhile, bridges in the U.S. are falling apart, airports are deteriorating and our rail system is neglected.