
Beipanjiang Bridge, suspended 565m above China’s south-west mountains [video] - mudil
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170531-chinas-impossible-engineering-feat
======
shubhamjain
What an incredible achievement. Every time I see China's engineering marvels,
or any visible statistics of its progress, I feel a slight tinge sadness as an
Indian citizen. In India, such feats are few and far between and if you
account the time taken to complete them, the scenario is even more depressing.

Chenab bridge, touted as soon-to-be world's tallest railway bridge, for
instance, was scheduled to completed by 2009. Work halted due to safety
concerns, but began again an year later. The date was, then, shifted to 2015
and now, the newer estimate suggest it will be completed by 2019 [1]. I am not
sure if we'll be able to abide by that too.

Democracy might give people something to cheer about, but, for a country
fraught with inefficiencies, it does make progress awfully slow.

[1]:
[http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/...](http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/railways/worlds-
highest-railway-bridge-to-come-up-over-chenab-by-2019/taller-than-eiffel-
tower/slideshow/58573206.cms)

~~~
melling
I'm an American and I understand too. We are living through the decades where
America gave away its leadership in the world. We can't get anything
accomplished at a reasonable price in reasonable time.

For example, China built 14,000 miles of high-speed rail in about 15 years,
with another 10,000 on the way. In America we still haven't built our first
line. Every time the discussion comes up, it degenerates into people
explaining all the places it won't work.

Not to worry for India, in 50 years it will be better off than today. It might
even pass the US.

~~~
jhayward
> I'm an American and I understand too. We are living through the decades
> where America gave away its leadership in the world. We can't get anything
> accomplished at a reasonable price in reasonable time

It's not that we can't get it accomplished reasonably, you'd be amazed at how
fast and cheaply major projects can be developed if funding is properly
structured. It's rather that we've wasted our treasure on other things. Jack
Ma had an interesting comment at Davos[1] - what would the US be like if we
had spent the $14 trillion we've wasted on war and wall street bailouts on
infrastructure, research, and education in the Midwest?

[1] [http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/18/chinese-billionaire-jack-
ma-s...](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/18/chinese-billionaire-jack-ma-says-the-
us-wasted-trillions-on-warfare-instead-of-investing-in-infrastructure.html)

~~~
twoodfin
$14T is an absurd exaggeration of the budgetary costs of post-9/11 wars and
post-2008 bailouts. The entire Iraq war/post-war cost $800B, most of the TARP
bailout money was paid back. You can claim there were huge knock-on costs to
the economy for either if you like, but skipping either or both would not have
given the US Government trillions to spend on Midwestern infrastructure.

~~~
dxhdr
_> The entire Iraq war/post-war cost $800B_

Source? The Congressional Research Service published a report in 2014 stating
$1.6 trillion as the cost of war. Every other article I could find suggests
this number is far too low and estimates $2-6 trillion.

[https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-war-anniversary-
idUSB...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-war-anniversary-
idUSBRE92D0PG20130314)

[https://www.brown.edu/web/documents/nosearch/2016CostsofWar....](https://www.brown.edu/web/documents/nosearch/2016CostsofWar.pdf)

~~~
losteric
I've encountered the Brown article before. Averaging the $3.6 trillion spent
to-date since 2001, we're spending $240 billion per year on war in the Middle
East.

For perspective:

* Hillary Clinton's campaign platform included a decent infrastructure bill - allocating $250 billion over 10 years.

* NIH is estimated to spend $8 billion this year on cancer and cardiovascular research - the leading causes of death in America, killing over 1 million people each year.

------
prawn
Seriously impressive bridge.

(It's a video a few minutes long and worth watching. I rarely watch videos on
news sites, but glad I watched this one.)

~~~
sundvor
Ditto; great video. Got to love such great feats of engineering.

------
factsaresacred
Great video and editing.

What China has achieved is truly incredible. For anybody young and commitment
free (or even just commitment free), you should go there. Cool people, so much
opportunity, and you get to live in the heart of a rising super-power.

Also, that guy speaks Chinese like an excited teenager.

~~~
FreakyT
> For anybody young and commitment free (or even just commitment free), you
> should go there.

Are there english speaking startups one could work at? Are work-permit
requirements doable?

~~~
dfguo
Strikingly is a YC-funded company based in Shanghai. We sponsor visa.
Typically, a person with 2 years of working experience can get work visa
issued in few weeks.

We are hiring people in engineering, sales and marketing departments
[https://www.strikingly.com/s/careers](https://www.strikingly.com/s/careers)

------
moontear
Really impressive bridge to drive over. Our bus driver (regular travel bus)
stopped on the bridge so people could take pictures. Nobody could tell us why
he stopped on the bridge. We figured only afterwards that it is the worlds
highest bridge we drove on.

------
NaliSauce
I find it fascinating that (pressure) grouting is shown as something
revolutionary and new here.

------
london888
Thanks for posting this - I use the BBC site from the UK and wouldn't have
seen it otherwise as it's on the .com site. Also interesting to see the
comments about the reporter's Chinese.

------
MarkMc
An engineering marvel, but most likely an economic white elephant. The New
York Times recently had a more critical report on China's bridges [0]

China is addicted to infrastructure projects to boost its GDP. The problem is
that these projects in aggregate produce a poor economic return, so China's
debt as a percentage of GDP is growing unsustainably. At some point it will be
forced to have a painful adjustment to lower growth, especially for investment
spending.

Personally I find Larry Summers analysis pursuasive when he argues that China
will most likely achieve 4% growth over next two decades [1]

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/world/asia/china-
bridges-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/world/asia/china-bridges-
infrastructure.html)

[1]
[http://www.nber.org/digest/mar15/w20573.html](http://www.nber.org/digest/mar15/w20573.html)

~~~
bane
It is unsustainable long-term, but it's a reasonable model to follow. Build
today while the cost is cheaper, create a larger general economy and then
coast for a while. Japan also spent decades boosting GDP with huge
infrastructure projects. They can't sustain them anymore and in some areas are
starting to dismantle some of the excess but the Japan of today is much nicer
place to have a flat economy than the Japan of the 40s or 50s.

------
contingencies
The Beipangjiang's twin is the Nanpangjiang, which is a fascinating tributary
to the Pearl River Delta and one of the longest rivers in China by total flow
length. It is followed in part by the French narrow-guage railway from
Haiphong to Kunming and also spanned by some amazing bridges and these days
many dams. Southwest China is really impressive topographically.

------
blahedo
Can someone explain the statement about the length of the cables (in the
section starting about 2:48) that they'd stretch from Beijing to New York if
laid end to end? It seems so obviously false (there's, what, a few dozen of
them, maybe a hundred?) that I assume I'm missing something.

~~~
grue2
Suspension bridge cables are made of smaller cables. And those smaller cables
are made of yet smaller cables. For example:
[http://regex.info/i/JEF_042406.jpg](http://regex.info/i/JEF_042406.jpg)

That's my guess.

~~~
blahedo
Ohhh that totally makes sense. That image really illustrates the point well,
too! Thanks!

------
liuw
Wow, just wow. I knew about this bridge but didn't really realise it is so
impressive. The view is just spectacular.

I can't wait to arrange a trip there.

------
sebasxnco
!Woah¡ without words... It's amazing.

------
iUsedToCode
I like how the reporter speaks Chinese. Usually it's english only, which i
suppose is translated off screen for the local being interviewed.

I don't watch much BBC so i don't know if that changed lately. It's a change
for the better imo.

~~~
jstanley
It seemed to me that he was interjecting with arbitrary comments, just to show
off that he speaks Chinese. I didn't think it added to the video at all.

~~~
tsukaisute
Chinese speaker here. His comments were all over-the-top excited, repeating
and exaggerating others' words, almost like mocking the Chinese staff (see
around 2:20 mark for example.) Think Borat-speak. Seemed very strange and
unfit for this otherwise good piece.

~~~
gsklee
> It seemed to me that he was interjecting with arbitrary comments

No, he's having fluent and meaningful exchange of words with those
interviewees.

> Chinese speaker here

You're definitely not a native speaker.

> almost like mocking the Chinese staff

I'm not sure why you interpreted it that way but there's absofreakinglutely no
mocking people in there, hey.

All of those whom he interviewed were speaking Mandarin with different degrees
of accents and apparently the guy has some pretty decent level of command of
the language so he can still converse with most of them no problem. The last
one he interviewed (starting from 03:30) spoke with a heavily accented version
of Mandarin so even I had to pay attention to understand like, 80% of what he
was saying; the reporter probably had issues understanding him as well so he
just smiled and nodded. Overall I found the reporter's usage of Mandarin as
well as his interaction with others to be very natural.

I am a native Mandarin speaker.

~~~
tsukaisute
Hey, I never questioned his fluency, just not being able to speak in a
professional/serious tone to match the other people. If you liked it, great.
Also, you're assuming too much about a 鄉民 on the Internet. :)

~~~
mistermann
Another way of looking at it: respect. In the past, translators were always
used on news stories from China. Now, English speakers are going through the
effort to learn Chinese _because they know it is in their best interests as
China ascends to the spot of the(!) world superpower_.

------
Kardinal
What China has achieved is truly incredible. I knew about this bridge but
didn't really realise it is so impressive. The view is just spectacular.

------
markdown
[ _Cough_ ]([http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/03/africa/kenya-bridge-
collap...](http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/03/africa/kenya-bridge-
collapse/index.html))

That's a beautiful bridge though.

~~~
Cookingboy
Yeah, let's be snarky, one bridge collapse during construction means the whole
country cannot build a decent bridge.

Some of the longest and most used suspension bridges are in China, and they've
been in use for years in major cities like Shanghai.

Here is a list of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world, look at how
many of them are in China:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_cable-
stayed_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_cable-
stayed_bridge_spans)

~~~
markdown
I don't need to be sold on China and their incredible achievements. Have
visited, enjoyed my time there.

It was meant as lighthearted snark, since the bridge collapse only just
happened a few days ago. I'm sorry it didn't come across right.

~~~
Cookingboy
Yeah no problem, that makes sense, to be fair I've personally seen Chinese
companies cutting corners as far as safety goes.

I don't know what's more impressive, their capability to achieve super high
quality at low cost or their capability to achieve unsafe quality at even
lower cost...

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The fenghuang bridge collapse a few years ago caught my attention. Definitely
corruption that took it down with 40+ workers.

But I've travelled on these bridges and don't think they are unsafe. The
expressway ones at least seem to be supervised much more closely.

------
zokier
There is very little provided for the reason for building the bridge. Doing a
massive construction project so that some potato farmer can carry his goods to
neighboring village seems unwarranted. Is there some industry or something
that can use the bridge, or maybe it has some strategic value?

~~~
moontear
No particular insight here, but the bridges and the new roads are all part of
the Chinese infrastructure initiative. Besides the new towns being built to
replace old ones you also have whole road networks and bridges being built to
connect the country. The area where this bridge is consists of mountain after
mountain and driving through theee giants is pretty impressive. Same goes for
train routes: also over bridges over mountains, through mountains etc. If you
look left and right there are NO traditional old buildings, even though it is
clearly rice and potatoe farmers you are looking at. And they all have new
cars. Working the fields by hand but a car they have...

I don't think you can categorize each bridge for its commercial or strategic
value. Before it took you X hours to get from location Y to Z now it is less.
It's not about connecting two potatoe farmers it is about connecting the
county and modernizing its infrastructure.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
These bridges are almost always tolled on express ways. If the potato farmer
below doesn't (or can't) pay the toll, then they aren't going to use the
bridge. More to the point, this bridge is better for thru traffic and has very
little to do with the potato farmer.

A comment made in an a recent NYT article on these new Chinese bridges:
[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/world/asia/china-
bridg...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/world/asia/china-bridges-
infrastructure.html?referer=https://www.google.com/)

> "If you don’t build roads, there can’t be prosperity,” said Huang Sanliang,
> a 56-year-old farmer who lives under the bridge. “But this is an expressway,
> not a second- or third-grade road. One of those might be better for us
> here.”

Expressways are sexy and useful if you are driving thru. But...I have the
feeling they are overbuilding it in many places while not caring much about
the less sexy roads that might improve local lives more. But then, such roads
would never be talked about abroad and wouldn't do much for China's prestige
(and therefore the official's in charge promotion).

The cars on the expressway have little bearing on the farmers below it. A rice
farmer isn't going to be driving a new Audi or even a Toyota, even in rich
Zhejiang, but definitely not in guizhou or Hunan.

~~~
liuw
> Expressways are sexy and useful if you are driving thru. But...I have the
> feeling they are overbuilding it in many places while not caring much about
> the less sexy roads that might improve local lives more.

IMHO you're having this backward. Without the major infrastructure
spearheading the development of this region, there won't be interest (money)
to overhaul the local roads and bridges.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
That remains to be seen. Right now china is neglecting less sexy
infrastructure for more sexy infrastructure in a very centralized non market
manner. That's why an ultra modern HSR can be flooded out whenever there is a
bit of rain (billions for HSR, much less for basic draimage). Also the model
that the expressways are being built (loans paid off with tolls), doesn't
transfer at all to local roads and bridges.

