0 / 04 Jul 2014
For about two decades straight, day-and-night, 24/7, China has been
the world’s construction ground, with architectural marvels and giant
infrastructure springing up at a swift rate and on an enormous scale.
The Beijing Olympics set some ungodly tight deadlines on a few of these
projects, but with sheer drive, massive manpower, capital investment,
and the directive planning power of the state, nearly all of these mega
projects have been completed in a matter of years — unheard of anywhere
else in the world.
The world may know about pieces like the Bird’s Nest, the
Qinghai-Tibet railroad, and the Three Gorges Dam, but here are some
others that have been delivered around China in the past 5 years.
1. Beijing Capital International Airport Terminal 3, biggest building in the world:
Here’s a pretty good discovery channel documentary on its construction process, and alludes to some of the land issues we encounter in a fast-developing China.
2. Yangshan deep water port and East China Sea bridge (stage 1 completed)
More here (thanks to Glyx).
3. Hangzhou Bay sea bridge, longest sea bridge in the world
4. Suzhou-Nantong Yangtze River bridge, longest cable-stayed main span in the world
5. Beijing-Tianjing inter-city rail, fastest rail speed in the world
6. Shanghai maglev, to be extended to Hangzhou
7. Shanghai World Financial Center, tallest building in the world by roof height (before Dubai completes its)
8. Beijing National Theater (The Egg)
9. CCTV tower (structure completed)
Not too shabby. For a light dig, I’ll even submit that while certain
countries and their protesting industry were busy figuring out how to
embarrass China ever since Beijing won the Olympics bid, China seems to
have been too busy to pay attention.
To leave off this post, this site
has descriptions of some other mega-projects. Among the ongoing and
planned ones that will be completed in the next decade or so are the
Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail, the Caofeidian port, the Lingang city
(with a huge circular artificial lake), Changxing Island shipyard. Of
course, there are still an unimaginable number of other projects going
on, rapidly expanding cities, highways, bridges, tunnels, dams, nuclear
reactors, airports, diverting water from the south to the north, etc…
makes one dizzy just thinking about it.
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