

China’s plan to build the longest underwater tunnel on the planet - fortepianissimo
http://qz.com/103187/china-plan-to-build-bohai-undersea-tunnel/

======
enko
What's crazy about it? I resent that headline. Doing big things should be
applauded. Good on them.

You want crazy? America binding itself hand and foot with its bullshit Chicago
School economic idealogy, that's crazy. It is absolute frigging nonsense and
will be the ruin of the country. Now watch everyone else eat its breakfast,
lunch and dinner.

Note: This tunnel would "cost" china less than one month of the USA's
"quantitative easing". For whatever "cost" means to a government that can
print its own money. The hilarious thing is, the USA can't pump that money
into infrastructure projects because of their stupid, stupid political
aversion to a misunderstood fear of SOCIALISM! So they have to funnel
everything through the banks. China doesn't give a shit, pumps money straight
into infrastructure. At the end of the day, China has the infrastructure, the
USA has what? Some banker's bonuses and another thousand foreclosed houses. So
what were you saying about "crazy"?

~~~
protomyth
First, "crazy" isn't automatically a negative term. It can even be seen as
positive. Apple used the word in a ad campaign[1] early in Steve Job's[2]
return.

As to the infrastructure, it really has nothing to do with some fear of
socialism. It is very much the problem of cost s, regulatory hurdles, and
(increasingly) lack of skilled workers to carry out the construction. Court
costs are the biggest killer. Every group is going to bring a lawsuit in any
big infrastructure project. China doesn't have to worry about that[3].

For all the talk, if high speed rail was $1 million per mile and we had no
lawsuits, we would have the things all over the place.

1)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgtLSHhTPg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgtLSHhTPg)

2)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syhEFKuX5yI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syhEFKuX5yI)

3) sometimes this hurts more than helps when problems arise in the project

~~~
markdown
> It is very much the problem of ...and (increasingly) lack of skilled workers
> to carry out the construction.

I don't think a major construction project anywhere else in the world
exclusively uses homegrown labour and technology. Are you implying that the US
can't/won't hire german/dutch/japanese/chinese engineers for infrastructure
projects?

When the whole world is your labour market, lack of skilled labour can't be an
excuse.

~~~
protomyth
Engineers do not build infrastructure projects. They design them and
supervise. I am talking about the people who can actually do welding,
plumbing, construction, etc.

Its not exactly easy to get foreign workers into the US to do vocational work.
Projects around the oil fields in ND are delayed or cancelled because of a
lack of workers. Heck, the oil companies are currently recruiting in Canada.

------
ChuckMcM
Sigh, its sad to see the technology stuff getting side swiped in the comments
by ideological rhetoric.

A 76 mile tunnel, under water, is an ambitious effort. Just like tunneling
through a mountain in Switzerland [1] was an ambitious effort.

What these projects do is advance the knowledge we have of how to build
tunnels (which since we don't do them all that often is very precious
knowledge). The notion of having it be a covered trench tunnel like Boston's
Big Dig is interesting although at the depths they are talking about it might
be interesting to make a semi-floating tube type tunnel. Either way, taking on
the challenge is intrinsically interesting to people who are amazed by very
large infrastructure projects.

[1] [http://news.discovery.com/tech/worlds-largest-tunnel-
drilled...](http://news.discovery.com/tech/worlds-largest-tunnel-drilled-
under-swiss-alps.htm)

~~~
rosser
_Sigh, its sad to see the technology stuff getting side swiped in the comments
by ideological rhetoric._

Seriously. I mean, I'm personally very glad to see NSA-gate, _& c_ getting
discussed here, but the incessant sniping, relevant or not — hell, _informed_
or not — is really starting to sour my experience of HN.

~~~
enko
I do hope you weren't talking about my comment. I would not like to think I
was contributing to this perceived decline in HN standards.

I wrote what I did because I took a kind of offence at the assumptions baked
into the article. I felt large parts of it were concerned with a kind of
condescending, "tut-tut" economic opinion - look at what these crazy chinese
are wasting their money on! And this opinion seemed to be rooted in what I
consider to be a profoundly flawed economic theory, which I wanted to raise
questions about.

I'm sorry I derailed the discussion about this interesting project, though.
I've been through the Seikan tunnel a number of times and it's an absolute
wonder of engineering (do you know there are 2 stations inside?). But I
couldn't let the article's smug little swipes at those wacky Chinamen go
unchallenged. Perhaps, for the good of the community, I (and everyone else)
should have.

------
rgbrenner
A tunnel 76 mi long is "crazy"? Is this the first Chinese infrastructure
project the writer has heard about?

108 Chinese Infrastructure Projects:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/108-giant-chinese-
infrastruct...](http://www.businessinsider.com/108-giant-chinese-
infrastructure-projects-that-are-reshaping-the-world-2011-12?op=1)

There are a couple of projects at the end that are 10X the cost of this
tunnel.

$200 Billion (5x the cost of this project) spent in 2012 on roads:
[http://money.cnn.com/gallery/news/world/2013/05/23/china-
inf...](http://money.cnn.com/gallery/news/world/2013/05/23/china-
infrastructure.fortune/2.html)

~~~
beachstartup
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel)

it's only 2x as long as the chunnel. this isn't mind-boggling stuff here, it's
just that everyone hates china/chinese people and it generates a ton of
traffic.

------
OldSchool
One country invests $USD 42 Billion for infrastructure that will last decades,
the other spends that much for a few months of an ill-defined war and spying
on its own people.

Which one is the USA and which one is China? Depends which century you're
talking about I guess.

------
tokenadult
We'll see if this works as well as previous infrastructure projects in China.

"Liu Zhijun, China's ex-railway minister, sentenced to death for corruption"

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/08/liu-zhijun-
sente...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/08/liu-zhijun-sentenced-
death-corruption)

"China’s Bridge Collapse: Infrastructure Boom Raises Safety Questions"

[http://world.time.com/2012/08/27/bridge-collapse-in-china-
ra...](http://world.time.com/2012/08/27/bridge-collapse-in-china-raises-
questions-about-safety-of-countrys-road-construction-boom/)

"China failed to heed rail safety warnings"

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bbd56722-b78c-11e0-b95d-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bbd56722-b78c-11e0-b95d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2Ys75lSrX)

"Grieving Chinese Parents Protest School Collapse"

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/world/asia/17china.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/world/asia/17china.html)

About the specific proposed project mentioned in the link kindly submitted
here, other news reports

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/11/us-china-tunnel-
id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/11/us-china-tunnel-
idUSBRE96A0EK20130711)

mention

"China announced plans in 1994 to build the tunnel, at a cost of $10 billion,
and set to be completed before 2010. But more than 20 years on, the project
remains stuck in the planning stage, the website said, without elaborating."

~~~
nawitus
Luckily the United States have no infrastructure problems.

~~~
b6
tokenadult isn't saying the US is perfect. He knows China better than most. In
China, these kinds of projects are riddled with corruption. They're
practically _for_ theft primarily, and only secondarily for whatever their
stated purpose is.

------
mjs7231
Curious question. How does one get proper air flow in a tunnel that long?

~~~
Someone
A tube for each direction helps a bit, as cars or trains will push air around.
That certainly won't be enough, though.

The Chunnel uses the service tunnel for ventilation
([http://www.brighthubengineering.com/structural-
engineering/8...](http://www.brighthubengineering.com/structural-
engineering/80592-effect-of-speeding-trains-and-pressure-changes-in-the-
chunnel/)) Wikipedia also claims ventilation issues were an argument to build
it as a train tunnel, rather than a car one.

------
swamp40
These tunnel boring machines are one of humanities greatest achievements.

Look at their size:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hamburg.Trude.wmt.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hamburg.Trude.wmt.jpg)

It took 3 years for men and mules working 24 hours a day 6 days a week to dig
a 2 mile tunnel out under Lake Michigan for Chicago's clean water in 1865. It
was heralded as the 8th wonder of the world.

------
redact207
Wow, this is a really interesting project. As someone who used to live next to
the port in Dalian I'm really curious what the motivation of this project is.

The article mentions it'll generate $3.7b pa, but I assume a big chunk of that
revenue will come at the expense of the local shipping route from Dalian to
Yantai & Weihai.

From a logistical standpoint I'm scratching my head a little. There's not a
huge amount of demand for a container to start in Dalian and finish in Yantai;
so justifying a big time saving on that basis seems odd.

China does have a tendency to build a lot of stuff to bump up their GBP and
production output to keep people employed and avoid civil unrest. Even so, I'd
love to see this get built, but probably will still take the boat.

~~~
useruseruser
Well, I have no idea about what the true demand is for this project, but I
random article I pulled up on this project claims that today the estimated
traffic between the two cities is at least between 30-40k cars/day
([http://house.qingdaonews.com/content/2013-07/12/content_9853...](http://house.qingdaonews.com/content/2013-07/12/content_9853969.htm\])).
Apparently, the current infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle this, so that
some trucks will actually still choose to go the land route. Also, there is
something called a train ferry transporting trains across the sea? I had no
idea.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _Also, there is something called a train ferry transporting trains across
> the sea? I had no idea._

There are certainly such things, sometimes amazingly seamless, though I've
only seen them for passenger trains. Freight trains do tend to present
different tradeoffs...

------
tnuc
Good to see China looking at the long term economic benefits from undertaking
such projects.

------
contingencies
I've travelled (and lived!) quite a lot in Shandong province.

The area slightly west of Yantai, where the tunnel is apparently supposed to
land (judging by the map in the article), is known as Penglai. This area was a
small historic port near a promontary that used to be known in Chinese
literature as where the eight immortals cross the ocean. This is apparently
due to visual phenomena during certain weather conditions that make it appear
as if there are magically appearing islands offshore. It's also claimed by
some (perhaps local tourist authorities, only) to be where China's first
totalitarian ruler, Qin Shi Huang, sent hundreds of young children out in to
the ocean in search of his own immortality.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penglai_City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penglai_City)

Unfortunately, what used to be a beautiful area (a hugely historic small
fishing port, and lots of old architecture) was ... in the manner of so many
historic potential tourist attractions across China ... completely flattened
and then rebuilt as a "new" old town by the local authorities; complete with
surrounding wall!

Some shots of the destruction: [http://pratyeka.org/penglai-
destroyed/](http://pratyeka.org/penglai-destroyed/) .. I have shots from prior
to the destruction, but not online. Basically it was a vibrant port with an
ancient history.

Also nearby in Shandong province are some lesser known (and some relatively
well known) attractions:

(1) the world soccer federation approved (great pictures of cafe-dining on a
Swiss junket in the museum there!) original home of football (the Chinese
invented everything, you know!), in _Linzi_.

(2) the ancient capital of _Qingzhou_ , the site of the 1996 discovery of the
largest hoard of Buddhist statuary of the entire 20th century, some Buddhist
carved mountain grottoes, and some of the oldest mosques in the country;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingzhou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingzhou)
[MY PICK]

(3) the historical (Tang Dynasty; ~1000 years ago) route of Ennin ( _Yuanren_
), a Japanese Buddhist monk who travelled by ship to China in search of
Buddhist lore, recorded his direct observations in colloquial Chinese (perhaps
to sharpen his language), and has since become one of the most important
sources on the average person's lot during what is commonly considered to be
China's apex era; the Tang. Interested hackers can can follow a previous
retracing of his steps that I helped to facilitate:
[http://pratyeka.org/ennin/](http://pratyeka.org/ennin/)

(4) the waters of _Zhang Bogo_ , a Korean Chinese pirate captain who grew to
significant fame operating off the east of the peninsula at about the same
time;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jang_Bogo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jang_Bogo)

(5) _Taishan_ , one of the most sacred mountains of China; particularly used
by ancient emperors;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan)

(6) _Qufu_ , the home of Confucius (unversally hated by travellers for its
strange, endemic hassle; but some nice sculptures in the temple and massive
outdoor family mausoleum)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qufu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qufu)

(7) The Grand Canal that linked historic northern and southern China,
primarily for supporting the north with the year-round agricultural produce of
the south;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_%28China%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_%28China%29)

(8) _Dezhou_ , an otherwise uninteresting little town on the Grand Canal which
was the final resting place for a Philippino muslim Sultan who came to visit
the Chinese emperor and is sometimes thought to have been poisoned by the
Chinese state .. possibly in retribution for not showing enough deferential
respect for the emperor .. on his homeward journey; his flunkies decided to
settle to protect the tomb and take local wives; thus many locals are partly
descended from Phillipinos!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dezhou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dezhou)

(9) The former German treaty port of Qingdao, with some nice architecture and
China's most famous beer;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingdao](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingdao)

(10) The former British treaty port of Weihai, where well to do Shanghai
residents took their summer holidays; this featured prominently in later wars;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weihai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weihai)

(11) Much of China's wine production.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shandong#Wine_industry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shandong#Wine_industry)

(12) The site of Fa Xian's landing in 412. Fa Xian was one of the most
important of the few well recorded pilgrims in early Chinese history who went
to India in search of Buddhist scriptures; thus paving the way for Buddhism's
further expansion (including to Japan and Korea).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faxian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faxian)

All in all, an interesting part of China. Though largely destroyed by
industrial development these days, it hides some fascinating history for the
motivated.

------
roy_x
whether it will be a underwater tunnel or a bridge or a combination is still
in planning stage, definitely it has lower priority than another tunnel which
connect Hainan province and the mainland, so this bohaiwan one will never come
into true before 2020.

