If completed, the 126 kilometer route would be the world’s longest underground railway tunnel.

Plans for the railway line were included as part of China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, which said a cross-strait train route is “planned” and would be completed by 2030.

During the National People’s Congress, currently being held in Beijing, Pingtan County FTA director, Zhang Zhaomin, told media the project is technologically ready to proceed. The People’s Daily Online reported Zhang saying, “The realization of the project depends on the decision of Taiwan.”

But it may not be as simple as that. At a government meeting, Taiwan Minister of Transportation and Communications, Chen Jian-yu, said Beijing has been doing all of the planning: “I have absolutely no information [about the project]. It would be more than just a transportation issue,” Chen said. “China has yet to talk to us through any channel of communication.”

However, Democratic Progressive Party legislator Lin Chun-hsien warned of an impending trap. “They [China] are taking advantage of us,” Lin said. “You should not even bother to waste time doing feasibility research on the project. Just ignore them next time when they bring up a similar project.”

At 126 km, the proposed tunnel would be nearly three times longer than the Channel Tunnel. It is expected to cost somewhere around $80 billion, but funding for the project has not yet been announced.

China has proposed a number of ambitious rail projects before, including an underwater railway line connecting Dalian and Yantai, reducing travel times from ten hours to 30 minutes; a railway line between Beijing and Seoul that runs through North Korea; and connecting China and Nepal with a tunnel directly underneath Mount Everest.

The post Beijing Proposes $80 Billion Railway Tunnel to Taipei, but Taiwan Hasn’t Been Told Yet appeared first on The Nanfang.

The hole opened up early Monday morning on Beijing East Road and is estimated to be ten square meters in diameter and one meter deep. Workers were seen putting up a temporary wall as someone approached the photographer who took the above pictures to force them to stop taking pictures (as seen in picture #3).

The sinkhole has caused traffic chaos in Nanjing, with traffic on the two-way street now just limited to one lane.

However, this isn’t the first time that a sinkhole has appeared on Beijing East Road. As a matter of fact, there have been four other sinkholes that have opened up while tunnel construction is underway:

• A 40 centimeter-deep sinkhole that opened at October 29 at 5:40am
• A 1.5 meter-deep sinkhole that opened at October 29 at 9am, trapping a passing ambulance
• A 3 meter-deep sinkhole that opened on November 2 in the afternoon
• A 1.6 meter-deep sinkhole that opened on November 10 at 8am

But as news reports tell us, the sinkholes don’t have anything to do with the subway construction. According to a spokesperson for the Nanjing Subway Construction Unit, Monday’s sinkhole is the result of heavy rains that have been falling on Nanjing.

Explanations for the other four sinkholes weren’t mentioned in the report.

Sinkholes resulting from subway construction in China is not limited to Nanjing. This past August, a 300 square meter sinkhole appeared in a densely-populated part of Dongguan that killed a worker underground, while Shenzhen has seen four sinkholes this year arising from subway construction-related causes.

Other Chinese fatalities resulting from subway tunnels collapse during construction include a Shenyang victim last month, and another in Nanning last October.

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The 3,886 meter-long tunnel runs from Shenzhen, Guangdong all the way to Mai Po District in Hong Kong, laying the tracks for high-speed rail travel between the two destinations.

Upon completion, the Kowloon-Shenzhen high-speed line will connect with the already operating Beijing-Shenzhen line. The new line is expected to cut travel time between Hong Kong and Beijing from 20 hours to just nine.

The joint effort to build the railway line was notably constructed under two different standards: Chinese and European, the latter of which was used for the Hong Kong section.

Wu Xiangong of the China Railway Group Company gushed over the opportunity to work with two different standards:

We realized seamless joint Chinese and European standards in the two rail tunnel sections and we can use the experiences to build on future opportunities of tunnel construction in Europe and even America. And through this practice we can find some benefits to the ‘going global’ strategy.

Previous estimates had put the railway’s completion to be in 2016.

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On September 19, Beijing will hold air raid drills in ten suburban districts and counties in order to “improve abilities to handle attacks”, China Daily reports.

The Beijing Civil Defense Bureau said the air raid drills will include the evacuation of local residents, as well as the protection of key infrastructure targets in Fangshan, Tongzhou, and Daxing Districts among other locations.

Air raid drills have been held regularly in China over the last decade and a half.

Last year, drills were held in Mentougou, Fangshan and Yanqing Districts in the outskirts of Beijing.  In April 2013, during political tension with neighboring North Korea, China held an air raid drill in the northeastern city of Huichen, warning that its nuclear weapons were “on standby”. Around the same time, North Korean paratroopers conducted a drill of their own, landing at the edge of North Korean territory, just across from the Chinese city of Dandong.

In January 2013, the People’s Liberation Army air force rehearsed a drill, dropping live bombs on a mock enemy port.

In September 2011, over 1,600 soldiers participated in an air raid drill in Zunyi, Guizhou that involved soldiers shooting at mock enemy planes.

And finally, in 2000, Shanghai held air raid drills in the city’s Jiading District. It was the first time the city had held air raids since 1950.

Air raid tunnels and shelters built underneath Beijing have recently made the news as an ongoing three-year campaign seeks to evict city residents living in these locations. A vast underground network built during tensions in the 60s with the former Soviet Union, an estimated million people known as the “rat tribe”, were thought to be living in the former air raid shelters before the crackdown began.

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A Shenzhen Metro tunnel under construction collapsed yesterday, trapping five workers and killing one. It happened yesterday on Shenzhen’s future Line 7, located between Fumin and Huanggang in Futian District at 4:10pm. Ten meters of tunnel collapsed, causing a three meter deep hole on the surface above. At the time of the incident, the five workers were changing the blades on the digging mechanism.

The trapped survivors were rescued by firefighters, with three requiring medical attention for their injuries. The last person to be rescued was freed at 11:35 last night.

The cause has not yet been determined. Nearly 50 residents living in houses above the cave-in have been evacuated from their homes as a safety precaution. Emergency repairs have been made as workers were later seen pouring cement into the hole on the surface.

This is not the first time construction on a subway tunnel in Shenzhen has led to a collapse.

This past February, a huge sinkhole that appeared in Luohu District was suspected to be due to construction for the Shenzhen Metro Line 9. Last November, a tunnel under construction for Line 7 caused a road to collapse near Fumin Road and Yitian Road. Last October, construction on Yinhu Station on Metro Line 9 led to yet another collapse.

Up until yesterday’s tragedy, no tunnel collapses in Shenzhen have involved any fatalities.

Despite this frequency, the building of the Shenzhen Metro has been criticized for improper safety protocols as far back as 2013. In July of that year, a tunnel for Line 9 collapsed, trapping seven workers and later prompting criticism that construction for the subway tunnels was using inferior building materials and work procedures.

Subway tunnel collapses have also been occurring throughout China. Over the past year, subway tunnels that have collapsed during construction killed one person in Shenyang last month, and another in Nanning last October. As well, Beijing suffered one such incident last March.

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Tensions with the former Soviet Union during a border conflict in 1969 led to the creation of a vast, complicated network of tunnels built underneath Beijing in the 1970s in anticipation of a nuclear war. Covering 85 square kilometers and located eight to 18 meters beneath the surface, the underground tunnels were designed to accommodate six million people upon completion. With no war coming to pass and the tunnels long forgotten by city residents, newcomers to the capital have since moved into the tunnels as an alternative to paying the city’s high rents.

Without an official Beijing resident permit called a hukou, migrant workers have no access to low-cost government housing. That leaves the tunnels as one of the only affordable options.

Scheduled until December 2017, the government campaign will target the illegal use of underground space. Official estimates say there are 119,100 residents living in the underground tunnels that Chinese media reports describe as “risky”. Up until 2010, it was legal to live in one of these underground facilities.

The Beijing government say 3,125 facilities are being illegally used, including 932 civil air-defense constructions and another 2,192 regular residential basements.

Last year, Xinhua reported a fifth of the 7.7 million Beijing-based migrants live either at their workplace or underground. Beijing’s housing authority refuted this statistic, citing a government survey that totaled that number at 280,000. The issue came to public attention after local media reported a number of people using a manhole cover to access their homes in the sewer below, to which local authorities responded by sealing the manhole and evicting the residents inside.

Although a portion of it served as a tourist attraction from 2000 to 2008, the tunnels have been largely ignored by the government while they have gained attention in the media.

Photo of 21 year-old fashion design student Erry Qing by Sim Chi Yin.

Photographer Sim Chi Yin spent five years documenting the people known as “the rat tribe”, described as mostly young people “making the best of their lives” with ambitions to climb the social ladder.

“I think for some people there is true upward mobility but for many people the hukou system, whereby migrants can’t actually buy homes and settle down, is still a huge barrier to them building lives and families here,” said Sim.

Professor Kim’s map in which orange dots represent underground residences, and blue dots represent affordable housing.

University of Southern California professor Annette Kim has mapped out much of the Beijing underground city by studying over 7,000 online classified ads in 2013. Kim found the average underground apartment to be 9.75 square meters, or 105 square feet, with an average rent of $70 a month.

Kim estimates that there are about one million people living underground who are deeply pragmatic, saying, “They would rather live underground than commute for a long time. It means that sometimes they could have two jobs.”

Beijing’s underground city was beginning to close down in 2011 when many of its entrances and access points were bricked up. Lonely Planet Beijing author David Eimer says it’s because of urban redevelopment. “Newer, bigger buildings require deeper foundations, so many of the tunnels have to be filled in for safety reasons,” said Eimer.

Photo of 19 year-old restaurant worker Su Fuzhou by Sim Chi Yin.

The extent of the network of tunnels is unclear, but is rumored to link Beijing’s central railway station with Tiananmen Square, the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City and the Western Hills. In keeping with the strategic use of underground facilities, the Beijing Metro was also designed to be able to move military personnel.

Built by 300,000 local conscripts including children, many of Beijing’s ancient walls that encircled the city were torn down and re-purposed as building material for the underground city. But even though this looks to be the end for Beijing underground city, another one looks poised to take its place. With real estate a prime commodity in the city, many real estate developers have been developing downwardsto make subterranean complexes, like the underground shopping malls in Dongcheng.

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Citing an official government report, the Singapore United Morning Post is reporting that the Chinese and Nepalese governments are collaborating on building a tunnel beneath Everest. When asked about such an undertaking, tunnel expert Wang Mengshu of the Chinese Academy of Engineering said that the project will require “some really long tunnels”.

Wang also pointed out that due to the fragile nature of the Himalayan mountains, the fastest a train can travel through a tunnel underneath it is 120 kilometers per hour.

With Tibet already connected with the rest of China’s railway system, the project will extend the Qinghai-Tibet railway another 540 kilometers to the border of Nepal. The formal announcement was made last December during Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi visit to Kathmandu, Nepal.

Expected to be finished by 2020, the project will significantly increase Chinese influence in Nepal, which has already invested one billion (US) into local water conservation and telecommunication projects. Apparently, the move to connect the railway lines of China and Nepal were “at Nepal’s request”.

The project is also expected to exacerbate friction between China and India.The project is also expected to exacerbate friction between China and India. A border dispute caused a brief armed conflict between the two neighbors in 1962, while this new development is raising Indian suspicions that China is trying to gain better access to its markets.

A number of high-speed railway projects that beggar the imagination have been associated with China. A plan to link Liaodong Peninsula with Shangdong Province by digging a tunnel underneath the Bohai Sea has recently been approved. According to Wang, all of the technological problems have been accounted for as Chinese engineers have spent 20 years researching the project.

Other high-profile future projects include a Beijing-Seoul railway line that passes through the heart of North Korea, a 7,000 kilometer railway line between Beijing and Moscow, and even one that links China with India.

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The entrance of the tunnel, image courtesy of Nanfang Daily

The tunnel, which is 1 metre tall and 80 centimetres wide, begins in the garage of a rented building in Liantang and leads to Falls Park in Hong Kong.

A security guard observes the sophistication of the tunnel, image courtesy of Nanfang Daily

Yesterday, a team of investigators from Guangdong discovered that in the garage opposite building 9 of Liantang Yicun was a collection of tools such as drills as well as bags of silt that had been dredged from the tunnel. They found yet more tools inside the tunnel.

There is a ladder leading into the tunnel, which itself is professionally lit and ventilated and the entrance is sealed with a steel plate. It leads burrowers to a particularly discreet location in Hong Kong.

Where the tunnel came out in Hong Kong, image courtesy of Nanfang Daily

Police suspect that the tunnel has already been put to use by smugglers.

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A woman was killed after falling down an elevator shaft the same day as three people were squeezed out of a moving Metro train and abandoned in the tunnel.

The woman, a cleaner named Tan Hailan (42) who was from Sichuan, fell down an elevator shaft from the 16th floor to the 2nd after the door opened but the elevator hadn’t arrived, according to Southern Metropolis Daily. The tragedy, which took place in building A of Baoan District’s Fuyong Heping Community at around 2:46 p.m., is the latest in a number of accidents involving elevators in the city.

The elevator in Fuyong Heping Community, image courtesy of Southern Metropolis Daily

The cause is being investigated and two other elevators in the complex were closed for maintenance afterwards.

Just over an hour later, three passengers were thrown out onto the tunnel when the door opened on an overcrowded Metro train that was in motion. The incident occurred near Convention & Exhibition Centre, and although nobody was seriously injured, the passengers had to be treated for shock, Xinhua reported.

Mr. Wu said his wife had just come from Zhongshan and they were on a day out with some friends. At 6:05 p.m. they were on a crowded train between Gangxia and Convention & Exhibition Centre when Wu heard a shout of: “There’s been an accident. Help!”

This female passenger’s legs were shaking for hours after the incident and her clothes had been soiled, image courtesy of Xinhua.

The train stopped and Wu turned to see that one of the people that had been thrown out onto the tunnel was his wife. He got out to help her before the trains doors closed and it moved off. The three people standing outside promptly called the police and they had to cling to a fire hydrant while another train whizzed past before anybody could get to them.

South China Morning Post has more:

A Shenzhen Metro spokeswoman surnamed Tang told South China Morning Post on Monday the accident was triggered by a scuffle that broke out between two passengers in the carriage. The chaos prompted someone to pull the emergency cord that eventually brought the train to a stop.

It is yet to be explained why the driver opted to move away while they were still in the tunnel.

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