china is in the midst of a construction spreeunparalleled in human history. over the course of just 40 years, the chinese will be addinga layer of infrastructure that will rival what we in the united states have built inour entire past. these are the megaprojects that will liftchina into the future. china wants to make its capital, beijing,the center of the world’s largest supercity, by merging three provinces into one continuousmegalopolis of 130 million people. that’s six times the population of new york. the region is called jing-jin-ji. it willtie together the cities in the three provinces along the bohai bay rim using advanced communicationsnetworks, new high-speed rail and subway lines,
and better highways. reports are that beijing’s focus will beculture and technology, tianjin will become a research base for manufacturing, and hebeiwill be the new home of many of the federal bureaucracy jobs that will be relocated fromthe capital. the project has the full backing of presidentxi jinping to catch the area up to china’s more economically prosperous regions, likewhat shanghai and nanjing have got going on in the yangtze river delta. covering roughly the total land area of theus state of kansas, jing-jin-ji will be unlike anything seen before in the history of mankind.
and even though it’s still a work in progress-- part of a long-term vision -- that’s not stopping people from moving into areasthat are completely unready for them. “the services are bad,†says a salesman who commutesa total of five hours a day on congested roads. his 6-year-old child has more than 65 kidsin his class. they live in yanjiao, one of the many tower-filledsuburbs that are sprouting up all across jing-jin-ji. yanjiao has about ⾠of a million residents,but just two very small parks and no bus terminals. why is this the case? because corruption is perceived as rampantat the local level in china, the central government doesn’t allow cities to keep the littletax revenues they do collect. so communities
like yanjiao have no way to pay for desperately-neededschools, roads or enough buses to adequately serve their citizens. the most vital piece of infrastructure thatwill help fix a lot of these problems is still being built, jing-jin-ji’s high speed railnetwork. with trains that can hit 185 miles per hour, urban areas that were previouslyconfined by the 60 miles per hour speeds of a car or subway or train, can now greatlyexpand. all those people filling the megacities inthe north have a shortage of the single most necessary resource for life: water. to solvethat problem, the chinese will soon be moving 44.8 billion cubic meters of fresh water eachyear from the wetter south to the dryer north.
there will be three canals in the project,a 716 mile-long eastern canal that will begin at the yangtze river and snake uphill, withthe help of more than 20 pumping stations, to reservoirs in tianjin. route two will flow downhill from the danjiangkoureservoir on the han river 785 miles across the north china plain to beijing. and the third route is the big western line.it’s still in its planning phase, but it will divert water from the rivers flowinginto the yangtze, sending it to the yellow river instead. the central government has rammed this projectthrough despite many concerns over pollution
and the forced relocation of hundreds of thousandsof villagers. it’s also late and over budget due to the soaring costs of building bridgesand tunnels for the canals to cross the many rivers and highways in its way. then thereare the fears that diverting water from the yangtze river could cause the world’s third-longestriver to run low, devastating those whose livelihoods depend on it. one proposed solution to this problem is togive the yangtze more water by redirecting rivers in southwestern china. but this wouldaffect india, bangladesh, myanmar, laos, thailand, cambodia, and vietnam, potentially causingan international crisis. for the immediate future though, the south-to-northwater transfer project is a done deal. following
the example of the american west in the previouscentury, china has completely reshaped its environment using dams and canals, allowingfor the arid north to support tens of millions more residents than it otherwise could. as the world’s most populous country, itmakes sense china would have the world’s busiest airport, and when the beijing daxinginternational airport opens in 2018, it will. with a maximum capacity of 130 million passengersa year, it will be significantly busier than the world’s current busiest airport [atlanta’shartsfield-jackson]. to make this work, beijing-daxing’s mainterminal will sprawl over 7.5-million square-feet. it’s unique starfish design was createdby zaha hadid architects to “provide an
exceptional passenger experience with minimalwalking and increased connectivity." the new mega-airport could have as many asnine runways: eight for civilian use and one for the military, and will cover more than6,600 acres in southern daxing along its border with hebei province. construction will cost around $13 billion,and will include a dedicated high speed rail line to connect the airport to the rest ofbeijing’s transportation system. beijing’s existing capital internationalairport is already running well over-capacity and has become the second busiest in the worldeven though it just opened in 2008. so to ease congestion, it will stay open, providingthe jing-jin-ji supercity with two mega-airports.
but it’s not just passenger congestion thatmakes it hard to fly in china. some analysts say the root of the problem is that the militarycontrols 80% of the airspace, which forces civilian aircraft to operate in narrow corridors,slowing them down. that’s why flight delays are rampant throughout the country. but that’s an issue china can and will fix,because it knows that while the 20th century was the century of the automobile, the 21stwill be dominated by the airplane, especially once faster, more efficient aircraft are introduced,making it even easier and cheaper to get around our increasingly interconnected planet. the chinese aren’t just flying in recordnumbers, they’re falling in love all over
again with the preferred method of travelin the 20th century, as hundreds of millions of chinese acquire middle class status andthe extra income to afford cars. this is presenting a relatively new challenge: heavy congestionon their motorways. so to tackle this problem, china has set itself apart from the rest ofthe world by embracing high speed rail at a breakneck pace. it’s goal to build a systemwith more than 35,000 kilometers of track is now more than half complete, making itone of the most expensive megaprojects in history. the other reason behind this plan is to allowpeople to commute to work from much farther distances than they could than if they hadto drive, making high speed rail the key to
urbanization. and because china has as muchhigh speed rail as every other country combined, it will have more and more of the world’slargest cities. in fact, of the top 10 urban areas on earthwith more than 20 million people, three of them are in china—and those cities are growingso fast that two of the three weren’t in the top 10 last year. the explosion in high speed rail in chinais especially mind-blowing when you consider that it was first introduced there in 2007,that’s less than a decade ago. since then, daily ridership has grown from 237,000 toover 2.5 million. to accommodate all those passengers, it’srailway ministry has swelled, and now has
the same number of employees as there arecivilians working for the entire united states government. china got to this point under the heavy-handedleadership of minister of railways liu zhijun, or “great leap liu,†who pushed his patrioticworkers in shifts around the clock to plan and build rail lines as fast as possible.he famously said, “to achieve a great leap, a generation must be sacrificed.†liu meanthis workers, but when a poorly designed signaling system caused a dramatic crash on a viaducthigh above a valley in 2011, it was clear that some of the first generation of passengerswould be sacrificed as well. news anchor: “china’s railway system hasbeen plagued with problems including corruption
and quality concerns. authorities have comeunder fire for the way they’ve handled the accident, especially when they buried severalcarriages before carrying out an investigation.†bryce: but, despite the 40 deaths - and morethan 200 injuries - in the wenzhou train collision, the attempts of the government to cover thedisaster up, and great leap liu’s subsequent fall from grace, the high speed rail boomin china has roared on and the system is now considered to be among the safest modes oftransportation in the entire world. it also leads the globe in annual ridership,has the longest single service at 2,400 km from harbin to wuhan and has the fastest commerciallyoperated train with peak speeds of 430 km/h. now, having successfully linked up much ofits own country with high speed rail, china
aims to do the same for the rest of the world.it is building systems in turkey, saudi arabia, and south america, and is bidding on projectsin russia, brazil, myanmar, and the united states. now for the most dangerous project on theagenda. the world’s longest underwater tunnel will connect the cities of dalian and yantaiacross the bohai sea, passing through two deadly earthquake fault zones. at 76 mileslong it will be longer than the current first and second-ranked underwater tunnels combined,and at a cost of $42 billion, it will be extremely expensive. but the chinese calculate thatit will be worth it. for one, it will slash the eight hour drivebetween the two cities to under two hours.
it will also connect china’s isolated northernrustbelt with its wealthy east coast, adding an additional $3.7 billion to the economyeach year. the experience could also establish the chineseas the preeminent submarine diggers in the world, and would be a serious practice runfor far more ambitious potential future mega-mega-projects like connecting china to south korea, or evenrussia to the united states across the bering strait--yes, that has actually been proposed. this isn’t the first underwater tunnel projectfor chinese engineers, either, who already gained some experience by completing the 3.8mile-long jiaozhou bay tunnel in 2011. but while the bohai sea is roughly the same depthas jiaozhou bay, the tunnel underneath it
will be 20 times longer. when it comes to construction, if they’relucky, the chinese will encounter only soft seabed, allowing them to use tunnel-boringmachines the whole way. but if they run into harder rock, they’re going to have to usethe “drill-and-blast†method embraced by the japanese during construction of theseikhan tunnel. using tons of dynamite hundreds of feet underwater is dangerous business,and it resulted in the unfortunate deaths of four workers over the course of that project,and maaaany accidental leaks. reporter: “in 1976 the project hit its biggestcrisis when 80 tons of seawater a minute began leaking in. 1.5 km of tunnel flooded. it tookfive months to get back on track.â€
bryce: the bohai tunnel will also have towithstand magnitude 8.0 earthquakes. in 1976, the deadliest earthquake in modern history-- a 7.8 -- killed a record 650,000 people in tangshan and surrounding areas. in 1969a quake measuring 7.4 on the richter scale shook the bohai bay itself. and there doesn’tseem to be much the engineers can even do about that threat besides simply reinforcingthe strength of the tunnel walls. of course, they could simply not bore a long hole undera deep bay through two fault zones, but that doesn’t really seem to be an option at thispoint. because officials throughout china are underenormous pressure to hit gdp economic growth targets, and there aren’t many other optionsthat could provide anywhere near as much economic
benefit as the bohai tunnel, which shouldbreak ground sometime in 2016. by now you’re seeing the trend here: theworld’s biggest city, the world’s longest canal, biggest airport, longest high speedrail network and underwater tunnel. so the fact that china is building the world’slargest wind power farm too shouldn’t surprise you. the gansu wind farm project will produce20 gigawatts of power by 2020, and will cost nearly $20 billion to build. turbines aregoing up at the staggering rate of 35 per day across the three areas that make up thepower base. in 2012, gansu’s capacity surpassed the total wind-generated-electricity producedby all of the united kingdom, and it’s just the largest of six mega-wind farms currentlyunder construction throughout china.
but china isn’t embracing wind just to reduceits carbon emissions, it’s doing everything it can to simply keep the lights on. someparts of the country with booming middle class populations suffer persistent electricityshortages because, just like us, people want refrigerators, dishwashers, washer and dryers,and computers in their homes, but there’s only so much energy to go around. so china’s state council is pushing foran across-the-board renewable strategy to reduce its dependence on oil, coal and gas,the finite resources of the 20th century whose extraction and consumption are subject toconstant geopolitical tensions. since 2013, china has led the world in renewableenergy production, with a total capacity of
378 installed gigawatts, coming from projectsas wide-ranging as gansu to hydroelectric power plants like the three gorges dam, whichspans the yangtze river and is the world’s largest power station of any kind. in justthe last 10 years, china has increased its solar panel production 100-fold to becomethe world’s leading manufacturer of the technology. with china now pumping more co2 into the atmospherethan the number two and three emitting countries - the us and india - combined, it’s vitalfor the future of the planet that it continues using megaprojects to create a lot more megawattsof clean, green power. another answer is nuclear power, which ismuch less controversial in china because of
its prodigious demand for electricity--andthe inability of its people to mount any real challenges to the government’s plans. mainland china currently has 31 nuclear powerreactors in operation, and another 24 under construction. compare this to the united states,which has 99 commercial reactors overall, supplying about 20% of its electricity needs.however, the us currently has plans to build just five more reactors--as it’s insteadchoosing to embrace natural gas, wind and solar power. even france -- who leads the world by generating3/4 of its electricity from nuclear -- is moving away from the technology, and willlikely close nearly half its nuclear power
plants in the next decade. the fukushima accident in japan, after thedevastating earthquake there, also accelerated the world’s break up with nuclear power,even causing china to briefly suspend new projects. but while the rest of the worldturns its back on nuclear energy, china is doing the opposite, more than quadruplingits nuclear capacity by 2030. the marquee project is the haiyang nuclear power plantin shandong province, which will eventually house eight ap1000 westinghouse pressurizedwater reactors for a total capacity of 8,800 megawatts--four times more power than is generatedby the hoover dam, a power station that provides electricity for 8 million people in the americansouthwest. and when you factor in that the
average home in china uses a fraction of whatan american home uses, the haiyang plant will end up producing enough electricity for tensof millions of people. but the $13 billion project is only the mostpowerful of the 13 different nuclear power plants currently under construction acrosschina--nine of which will have a maximum capacity of more than 6,000 mw. most are near large cities where power isneeded most, but this strategy raises concerns that if there were an accident, tens of millionsof residents could be exposed to dangerous radiation. the neighboring guangdong and ling ao nuclearpower plants have 28 million people within
a 75-kilometer radius, including hong kong.that’s many more than the 8 million who live within 75-kilometers of the san onofrenuclear generation station in southern california, but the decision was taken in 2013 to shutthe california plant down after numerous safety concerns became known to the public--highlightingthe opposite directions the two nations are heading in when it comes to nuclear power. the other issue china must deal with is howto dispose the many tons of radioactive waste it will be generating, which is always a contentiousissue because no one wants that in their backyard. the current plan is for construction to commencein 2041 on a high level waste repository site in the gobi desert.
on the whole, the danger of a costly nuclearaccident that china would pay for in both blood and treasure is fairly significant,but beijing is apparently willing to live with that risk, judging by its unrestrictedembrace of nuclear power. but these are tough choices, and it’s important to keep in mindthat in the age of climate change and ecological interconnectivity, nuclear power is stillan infinitely cleaner alternative to burning coal. the final megaproject featured in our seriesperfectly highlights both china’s ongoing struggle to maintain its unprecedented growth,and the unbelievable ambition that’s fueling its rise.
a constant challenge for most big cities isthat there’s only so much land to build on. for hong kong and shenzhen - two neighboringmetropolises with a total population of nearly 20 million - the boundary it’s running intois water. specifically, the pearl river delta, which separates the uber-populated easterncorridor from the far lesser populated cities of macau and zhuhai on its western shore. today, to get to macau (ma-cow) after landingat hong kong international airport, you are faced with either a four hour drive aroundthe mouth of the delta, or a long ferry ride through frequently rough waters. but that’s about to change, thanks to a$17 billion six-lane, multi-part bridge that
will cut the trip down to a 45 minute drive. it is an incredibly complex project, and includescost and construction sharing agreements between mainland china and its special administrativeregions of hong kong and macau. inspired by both the chesapeake bay bridge-tunnelin the us and the ã˜resund bridge that connects denmark and sweden, the hong kong-zhuhai-macaubridge will not only have to withstand typhoons, but to avoid cutting off one of the world’sbusiest shipping routes into hong kong and its unusually deep natural harbor it willplunge underwater as a tunnel. and at 28km, its longest stretch will be as if 15 goldengate bridges were lined up end-to-end-to-end-to-end. and that’s not even the craziest part. becauseshenzhen doesn’t want to be left out, it
too will build a megabridge across the deltajust a few miles to the north. basically, the region is booming so fast,and competition to tap into the cheaper land and labor available on the western side isso great, that shenzhen and hong kong have both committed to building multi-billion dollarmegabridges, and will essentially race to see who finishes theirs first. as you can see from a close look at the map,cities with populations totaling more than 40 million people surrounding the delta, thusrevealing the master plan: to lay the foundation for china’s second megalopolis, an urbanarea that could eventually exceed 100 million residents.
we started this video with jing-jin-ji, andwe’re ending it with what i’m calling hong-guang-zhong. two megalopolises, eachserving as perfect bookends to our story of china, a country that is counting on infrastructuremegaprojects like those we’re profiled to serve as the foundation for its rapid urbanization.but how well it manages that urbanization will largely define whether it continues itsambitious rise for the rest of the 21st century. for tdc, i’m bryce plank. this has beenanother daily conversation original multi-part documentary. if you found the topic of china’saddiction to megaprojects as fascinating as i do, hit that like button and share it withyour friends and followers, it really helps me out! if you made it here to the end ofthis video, thank you so much for watching!
click on the on-screen annotations to enjoythe other mini-documentaries i’ve made like the future megaprojects in the rest of theworld, the most interesting energy sources of the future, the history of the israeli-palestinianconflict, or my take on the immigration history of the united states of america.