Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, World's Longest Cross-Sea Bridge, Opens In China (VIDEO)

BEIJING -- China has opened the world's longest cross-sea bridge.

The Jiaozhou Bay bridge is 26 miles (42 kilometers) long and links China's eastern port city of Qingdao to the island of Huangdao.

State-run CCTV says the 110-foot (35-meter)-wide bridge is the longest of its kind and cost more than 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion).

CCTV says the bridge passed construction appraisals on Monday and the bridge and an undersea tunnel opened to traffic on Thursday.

The bridge supported by more than 5,000 pillars was built in four years.

Guinness World Records says the previous record holder for a bridge over water is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana. The Chinese bridge is more than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) longer.

Comments

[RButler]

11:33 AM on 07/25/2011

Ya see, if we cut more taxes, we too could build bridges and high speed rail and stuff.

[ramman]

10:02 AM on 07/05/2011

A disaster waiting to happen.

[netzwerg]

10:30 AM on 07/05/2011

Might be safer than Minnesota Bridge.

[ramman]

02:44 PM on 07/05/2011

True, it's just that all that water makes it seem a bit too scary being that region gets quakes and typhoons.

[Lahonda]

12:18 AM on 07/05/2011

Will the water eventually turn that wonderful brown they have a penchant for?

[RockmanRotties]

07:52 PM on 07/04/2011

Bad and stupid idea.. Tsunami and earthquake. In the future is not going to be good for this Earth according to the bible's warning. Dangerous driving in this bridge.

[JackTheSkipper]

07:30 PM on 07/04/2011

These projects are possible in China because if you defraud the government of the project money, the head will literally roll. Same goes to the banking industry. Chinese bankers can't do what the wall street did under the Bush administration and get away with not even a slap on the wrist.

[fuzzychickens]

09:14 PM on 07/04/2011

Rothschilds are working on growing influence in China - so things will go down the crapper soon there too.

[adamben]

09:42 AM on 07/05/2011

unless they run far far away and stash their loot:

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Opinion+Corrupt+Chinese+officials+flee+with+billion+says+report/5009270/story.html

[JackTheSkipper]

07:11 PM on 07/05/2011

Those corrupt Chinese men/women took the money and bolted out of the country. They knew their heads will roll if they stay in China. That's not the case with us. The Wall Street will rob the US citizens of their life savings, gamble it and expect the people to bail them out.

[Richard Aron]

06:38 PM on 07/04/2011

Wow! China is proving to be a super power indeed!

[rlivingston10116]

02:43 PM on 07/04/2011

26 miles across the sea, Huagdao Island is a-watin' for me..

[sanjayvarmasv]

06:34 AM on 07/04/2011

The entire bridge constructed in 4 years! Wow!

[mike72]

08:36 AM on 07/04/2011

4 Years is magical number. It make sense if you realize China is running on 5-years planning cycle. It will take one year to get started with money and resource in place, and four years to complete it.

As example, on the same day, China's high speed train from Beijing to Shanghai is in operation. The travel time between Beijing and Shanghai is reduce to 4 hours and 30 minutes. Because the subway system connects the transfer stations, it actually costs one hour less than flying between these two cities.

More critially, there will over over a dozen new cities spawning up across this high speed train line.

And on the exact same day, two other major operations are completed: the largest energy transit network in China AND the largest water transit network in China. Both are part of the 5 years plan and all finished within 4 years.

These three news are MILLION TIMES more important than this bridge in term of social and economical impact. But still it is really fun to watch this bridge in operation. I would love to zip through the bridge in a car and enjoy the sensation of riding across the ocean.

[Lahonda]

12:19 AM on 07/05/2011

...and without steel to boot. A miracle!

[Bienville]

09:10 AM on 07/05/2011

What makes you think it was constructed without steel?

[fairwayhill]

01:20 AM on 07/04/2011

Instead of throwing the money making wars, the US should spend the money to build bridges.

[smittlib77]

03:16 AM on 07/04/2011

Or repair and maintain the ones that we currently have, seeing as there were a couple of bridge collapses a couple of years ago if I'm not mistaken.

[kurtvb]

08:21 PM on 07/04/2011

I don't think China is at war with anyone, so they can put the money they are make off of American and Europe into their own country. Maybe, if we had leaders with any foresight they would be doing the same. This would of course necessitate bringing real jobs back to America to build these infrastructure projects. Projects that would mean many subcontractors and many sub-components. Which in turn would mean more good paying jobs. All these jobs would provide people with money to buy things, which would mean more jobs to make those things. If you make it harder to send those jobs overseas, more Americans will be working. That would mean the government would have more revenue to pay for the benefits that society wants.

It becomes a cycle, whereby the government stimulates the economy by producing real jobs creating real wealth. This in turn causes more jobs to be created to support those jobs, to provide the resources to keep those jobs going. Which causes more jobs to be made to support this unrelated work. Government stimulates the capitalist economy, not the other way around.

[michael sxh]

11:50 PM on 07/03/2011

Wow, you know what, I got the news from HP instead of Chinese Newspaper, and I am a Chinese.

China has so many big projects, lots of them cost more than 100,000,000,000 RMB.
Maybe you heard about “Three Gorges Dam ” before, and that project can't even rank top 10 in China today.

From your comments, I realised that I should stop doulting our government. At least, they build something(useful or not), and not wasted the money on wars.

By the way, walmart did a bad job in China, thier supermarkets can't beat the local ones, I think they are losing moeny.

[adamben]

09:47 AM on 07/05/2011

the three gorges dam is an ecological disaster, as you well know; garbage is constantly scooped up before it destroys the tubines via the water intake. also, diverting water from the south to the north will bring polluted water to those northern cities while drying up parts of the south.

don't get me wrong, progress is good but repeating the mistakes that the us made, inexorably, is frightening to watch, yet beguilingly beautiful.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

09:51 PM on 07/03/2011

$1.5B? That's IT?

[mike72]

11:38 PM on 07/03/2011

Yes ... one day expense for US war in Afghan.

Isn't it sad?

IT ONLY COSTS ONE DAY OF THE WAR and it might fundamentally change the economic situation between these two regions ... plus it gets to become a tourist attraction. It must be fun to zip across the ocean on a bridge.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

09:54 AM on 07/04/2011

Sad ain't the half of it.

http://costofwar.com/en/

$1.2T in DIRECT costs alone (the total economic income is about triple that) could have bought 1,000 such bridges!

[savvy7]

08:23 PM on 07/03/2011

If it's anything like the k*r*a*p they're selling to WallyWorld, we're already taking bets to see how long it stands.

[mike72]

11:40 PM on 07/03/2011

Chinese goods are above average. It is not the greatest in the world yet for the price range, it is doing reasonably well. Don't get sucker up into the sensational headlines.

Do a tally about how many recalls in US products in the last couple years and how many from Chinese products during the same time. You might be surprise!

[adamben]

09:49 AM on 07/05/2011

chinese products are shoddy because there is no quality control, like japanese products used to be. been to a store lately? there are good things coming out, but they are highly relegated by big brand names. have you missed the lead paint in childrens toys recalls?

[netzwerg]

09:27 AM on 07/03/2011

Americans have their own Chinese bridge.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/27/new-san-francisco-oakland-bay-bridge-made-in-china/

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

10:17 PM on 07/03/2011

The new SFOBB costs $7.2B and is 2.2 miles long. 10 lanes.
$3.3B per mile.
$330M per lane mile.

The new Chinese bridge is $1.5B and is 26 miles long. 110 feet wide. 6 lanes per the illustration.
$60M per mile
$10M per lane mile

The US bridge, costs some 30x as much.

Unbelievable.

[adamben]

09:51 AM on 07/05/2011

mostly labor. the chinese export their people to build stuff; the complete package.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-10/25/content_11450747.htm

[Sasa Milosevic]

08:29 PM on 07/02/2011

China is progressing while America declines.
Modern Chinese communism has enabled young people to feel the safety while the American dream fell apart like a corpse, bringing the harsh reality for hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans.

[ReelBusy]

08:13 PM on 07/03/2011

I don't want to be on that bridge or in that undersea tunnel in an earthquake or tsunami.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

10:18 PM on 07/03/2011

Do you have any idea the sorry state of US infrastructure?
Puleeze!

[becky bradshaw]

08:23 PM on 07/03/2011

Are you seriously advocating the Chinese Communist system? If we reduced wages to 1/10th of their current level in the United States, then the unemployment rate would go down, and as a result, our cities would compare to Mumbai.

The American South in 1850 (pre-Lincoln) dominated world commerce in cotton, at the time the preeminent global market. Slavery was, and is, an efficient economic system, but not one that should be repeated here.

During this period, "the South was expansionist and imperialistic, with designs for a “Golden Circle” of a slave-holder republic surrounding the Caribbean after the acquisition of Cuba and the rest of Mexico. The idea was to control their resources and bring “the blessings of republican government” to an unruly part of the world." (http://www.denverpost.com/quillen/ci_17850612)

Does this sound familiar?

[DAE]

12:04 PM on 07/04/2011

No.

[Vuittondon13]

08:16 PM on 07/02/2011

Im not to impressed either, as for the workers who don't have to ferry to work anymore I'd bet they much have what this bridge cost overall put to an increase in Chinese worker wages.

[DAE]

12:18 PM on 07/04/2011

OK, my son worked at a Chinese firm in Xiamen as an intern for a year after he graduated from a US university. He made about $1800 Yuan per month a low wage by Chinese standards. He lived in a 3 story apartment building in a working class neighborhood with 3 young Chinese roommates in their 20s, including a couple of college students. He had a room to himself. The place was not so great but livable (I visited him while attending a conference in China). They had some second hand furnishings and video games, music CDs and other stuff was strewn around the apartment's common living space. My son now has a low paying job in the US. He lives in a three bedroom house in a working class neighborhood with 3 roommates in their 20s, including a couple of college students. He has a room to himself. The place is not so great but livable. They have some second hand furnishings, and video games, music CDs and other stuff is strewn around the apartment's common living space. But he was a slave in China and a free man here. Right.

[adamben]

10:22 AM on 07/05/2011

our resources are not going where they should. we are turning into an idiocracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXRjmyJFzrU