The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge

By Paul Chong                               Sunday, 29 January 2017

China from an essentially poor agrarian country to its present status as an economic & industrial super-power is absolutely unprecedented & unmatched by any other country in the world . . . achieving it all in a matter of 3 to 4 decades. Putting it simply, it’s like leaping from having no phone to super smart phone. Historically, no other nation has ever done that.

It’s similar to walking on the moon as a giant step for mankind. Indeed China’s growth & progress have gone & impacted foreign shores by its win-win policy of mutual benefits sharing. Now technological & scientific advancements have propelled China to seeking out outer space, the moon & beyond.

In a quick flashback, China has been known & accustomed to monumental projects like the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, the Forbidden City & more recently the Three Gorges Dam . . . to showcase its engineering prowess and project its economic might.

Over the next 10 years, the China plans to move 250 million people — the equivalent of Indonesia’s entire population — into the country’s rapidly-growing mega cities. It has lifted out of poverty some 700 million to date.“China has always had this history of mega-projects,” said Huang Yukon, an economist and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank based in Washington.”
“It’s part of the blood, the culture, the nature of its society. To have an impact on the country, they’ve got to be big.”

From highways that span the continent, to, the largest wind power base in the world, to enormously popular airports, to new cities in the desert, China is showing what it really means to do big things.

Many of the projects are simply colossal, absolutely unbelievable & totally out of this world & cost exorbitant.

Huge superstructure projects could bolster China’s position as a manufacturing and trading powerhouse. In November 2016, the government said its freight rail link between eastern China and Spain had opened, allowing factory goods to reach Spain in just over 20 days. It is now the world’s longest rail journey, far surpassing the route of the famed Trans-Siberian Railway. Recently China’s freight trains achieved successful link between Shanghai & London.

The Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway

The Beijing Shanghai High Speed Railway is the world’s longest high-speed rail project to be constructed in a single phase. ($35 BILLION).

The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is the world’s longest cross-sea bridge, stretching nearly 26 miles — almost the length of a marathon. Bridge-building in China has become something akin to an Olympic event. In 2007, after China completed the longest sea-crossing bridge, in Hangzhou, the nation has regularly broken records. China now claims the longest bridge of any kind, the highest bridge and, in 2011, a new successor to the longest sea-crossing bridge, 26.4 miles long, in the eastern city of Qingdao. ($16 BILLION).

As a one-party state, China can easily muster the political will and financial resources to undertake such huge projects. The crux of the matter is that there is no undue bureaucratic delay in implementing & working through its undertaking.

In Dalian, a city of six million in the northeast, the proposed underwater rail tunnel to Yantai is just one piece of a master plan that includes a 163-mile urban transit system.

Work is also underway on what the city says will be the world’s largest offshore airport, a $4.3 billion development on an artificial island created with landfill, covering more than eight square miles.

Gansu Wind Farm
Located in the desert of northwest China, this is expected to be the world’s biggest wind turbine farm, with a capacity of 20,000 megawatts by 2020. ( $17.5 BILLION).

New Century Global Center
With 1.7 million square meters of floor space, it is the biggest building in the world, nearly three times the size of the Pentagon. ($2 BILLION).

Beijing Daxing International Airport
Groundbreaking has begun on Beijing’s third city airport, to be located south of the city, and due to open in 2019. ($13 BILLION).

Jiaozhou Bay Bridge
At 26.4 miles, the world’s longest sea-crossing bridge, with six lanes for car traffic. Opened in 2011. ($2.3 BILLION).

Shanghai Yangshan Deepwater Port
Built 20 miles out to sea, on a group of islands connected by one of the world’s longest bridges. ($18 BILLION).

South-North Water Diversion Project
A series of huge canals and pipelines that pump water from three different regions up north. ($80 BILLION).

West to East Gas Pipeline
A series of pipelines that ship gas to Shanghai and other big coastal areas. Major sections due to be completed by 2017. ($71 BILLION).

High-Speed Rail Network
The world’s most extensive high-speed rail system, now with more than 12,000 kilometers of track completed and speeds of up to 350 kilometers. ($322 BILLION).

MEGALOPOLIS
The most fascinating mega projects to be developed will be two Megalopolis.

Megalopolis in the Pearl River Delta Region

By 2030, China plans to round up 42 million people from a nine-city region into one giant megacity in the Pearl River Delta. The population is expected to hit 80 million by the time construction ends. ($322Billion).

Up north, Jingjinji or Jing-Jin-Ji (JJJ), also known as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, will become the national capital region of China. It is the biggest urbanized region in Northern China that includes an economic region surrounding Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei, along the coast of the Bohai Sea.

The new city should unite Beijing, Tianjin and the Hebei region into one supercity or megalopolis. China has approved a $36 billion railway plan to improve transport links between Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei.

Jing-Jin-Ji in China is so big it’s estimated to be the size of 17 Sydneys and, once completed, will be home to 130 million people, nearly three times the size of US population.

The massive project, which will see Beijing, the port city of Tianjin and the Hebei hinterland region connected by high speed rail, began two years ago, Chinese authorities have been talking about creating it for more than a decade.

This was born out of political pressure rather than economic prosperity. Over population, traffic congestion and high levels of air pollution have forced Chinese authorities to devise a new way of dealing with the growing problems, according to University of Sydney associate professor Duanfang Lu.

As a whole, each region will have its specific functions & responsibilities with Beijing essentially functioning on administration.

China is fast reshaping both domestically & globally the human, economic & political landscape. Having said all the foregoing, China with two-thirds of the world’s population & eighty percent of the world’s economy, will no doubt have both the ability & capacity to lead, transform & reshape the global economy. President Xi Jinping’s wise initiative & foresight in implementing the One Belt & One Road is a definite good move in the right direction. With the establishment of  the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a new multilateral financial institution designed to bring countries together to address the daunting  task ahead.

It is predicted that by 2020 China will be number one in the world. At G20 Summit, Hangzhou 2016, it showed that

G7 has no right to represent the World’s Economy. List of countries by foreign-exchange reserves.

Rank	G20 Country	Millions in $US	Member of  G7
1	China	3,305,445
2	Japan	1,262,509	Japan
3	Saudi Arabia	555,000
4	Russia	398,200
5	South Korea	369,840
6	India	367,169
7	Brazil	362,200
8	Germany	200,394	Germany
9	Mexico	179,708
10	United Kingdom	164,003	United Kingdom
11	France	153,890	France
12	Italy	143,183	Italy
13	United States	121,269	United States
14	Turkey	112,769

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