Expected to be completed in late 2017, the 55 kilometer bridge will be the longest cross-sea bridge in the world. Costing 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion), the traffic link between Lantau Island in Hong Kong and the mainland includes a seven kilometer underwater tunnel and a bridge section 30 kilometers long.

The bridge will reduce driving times between Hong Kong and Zhuhai from four hours to just over 30 minutes.

China has some of the longest cross-sea bridges in the world, including the Donghai Bridge in Shanghai, and the Hangzhou Bay Bridge.

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People were allowed into the building’s 35-meter tall, five-story gold-colored annex which is home to a number of restaurants, conference rooms and meeting halls. Visitors were also allowed to visit an exhibition hall in the basement which houses a model of the Shanghai Tower. Unfortunately, a trip to the top to take in Shanghai’s stunning, if polluted, views isn’t quite available yet.

The 127-story Shanghai Tower cost 15 billion yuan ($2.3 billion), and construction began back in 2008. At 632 meters, it is the second-highest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

When the building opens fully later this year visitors will be able to visit the 118th and 119th floors. Wind power generators are located on floors 121 to 123, while the 126th floor will house a venue for modern art and performances.

The Shanghai Tower is equipped with a number of environmentally-conscious design choices. The tower has 20 gardens, occupying 700 square meters. Water used in the tower for toilets and air-conditioning is collected from rainwater on the top floor and treated on the 66th floor. Meanwhile, a central control system will help regulate power consumption in the building.

One of the buildings most impressive features is its elevator. Travelling at a brisk 18 meters per second, a trip from the ground floor to the 118th takes just 30 seconds.

The post Shanghai’s Tallest Building Throws Open Its Doors… Kind Of appeared first on The Nanfang.

According to the National Development and Reform Commission, the new Chengdu airport, due to be completed by 2025, will process 40 million passengers annually, while processing 700,000 tons of cargo. The airport will be equipped with three runways and a 600,000 square meter passenger terminal.

While the numbers are impressive, they have been drastically reduced from the initial report. The original plan called for 90 million annual passengers and 2 million tons of annual cargo. The airport was supposed to have six runways and four passenger terminals.

At a projected cost of RMB 71.864 billion ($10.934 billion), Chengdu will be the third city in China to have two airports after Beijing and Shanghai.

A total of 50 new airports will be constructed during the next Five Year Plan, thereby kicking off a three-year action plan to develop major transportation infrastructure in China. The National Reform and Development Commission has said more than 300 such projects will be launched between 2016 and 2018.

Airports in Harbin, Shenzhen, Kunming, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi’an and Urumqi have been targeted to be turned into international transportation hubs.

The post Chengdu Scales Back Plans for New $11 Billion Airport appeared first on The Nanfang.

In 2014, President Xi expressed dissatisfaction with China’s “weird architecture”. Although foreign architects have been invited for years to submit unique designs, Chinese distaste for strange buildings has resulted in a government ban on the so-called “weird architecture”.

The ban, which was implemented early this year, was too late for Beijing’s new airport. As a prominent blogger on Weibo pointed out, the design of what is expected to be the largest airport in the world might, when viewed from a certain perspective, resemble part of the female anatomy.

Yesterday, Yang Jinlin posted a photo of the model of the new airport, along with this text:

“Here’s a bird’s-eye view of the design for the new Beijing Airport. Do you know the name of the designer?”

There is nothing really provocative about Yang’s post; but, netizens quickly followed Yang’s lead and remarked that the resemblance was uncanny: “This is worship of the reproductive (organs).” Others simply didn’t see it: “It’s clearly a starfish…everyone’s imagination is running too wild.”

The architect who designed Beijing’s new airport, Zaha Hadid, is a famous English designer of Iraqi descent. Despite her fame, Chinese netizens strangely insulted her with names like “witch”, “female devil”, “crazy”, and “alien”.

Most netizens make sense of new buildings by referring to them by what they resemble. Sometimes the comparison is benign, such as how the Shanghai World Financial Center looks like a bottle opener. Other times, the comparison is much more comical, such as how the People’s Daily Building resembles a penis (above left), or how the CCTV Tower looks like a pair of pants (above right).

The comparison prompted one netizen to complain, “The (building for the) People’s Daily is standing; the (building for the) CCTV is squatting; and now the airport in the capital is lying down. These new landmark buildings are such nonsense!! Oh Beijing, Beijing: where have your characteristics gone?”

Regardless of how netizens feel about the design, Beijing’s new airport is currently under construction, which began last year and is expected to finish in 2019.

If you happen to be one of the people who can’t see what all the fuss is about, then don’t expect the Chinese media to tell you. In news reports about the scandal, no mention is made of what the airport design resembles.

But if you do need some help, this Weibo user helps us with this particular interpretation:

The post Chinese Netizens Compare Beijing’s New Airport Design To Female Anatomy appeared first on The Nanfang.

By the end of April, the Beijing Railway Bureau will install free WiFi on over 100 of its trains. Meanwhile, the Jinan Railway Bureau is running a pilot project that will introduce free WiFi on 75 trains.

Passengers will be required to download an app to use the WiFi services. Instant Messaging apps such as QQ and Wechat will be accessible, although passengers will be limited to the named portals.

According to Beijing Youth Daily, the trains will have 3G and 4G WiFi signals, and service providers will be located along the routes. Each train car should be able to accommodate up to 120 devices simultaneously.

The train routes featuring the WiFi service will include lines from Beijing to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Kunming, and Lhasa.

It’s not all good news, though: there are no plans to offer free WiFi on the country’s high-speed trains.

Previous news reports had suggested that WiFi service would not be coming to Chinese trains. An NPC delegate reportedly said WiFi service on China’s trains was not possible.

Chinese Academy of Engineering scholar and NPC delegate, Wang Mengshu, told reporters that he doesn’t recommend WiFi on high-speed trains because it had a negative impact on the train’s communication systems, it was too expensive, and prone to breaking down. Wang concluded that, “It’s much better for everyone to just look out the window. Why bother with WiFi?”

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Stocks for the China Railway Construction Corp. rose by as much as 6 percent on the Hong Kong stock exchange on Monday, while the China Communications Construction Co. experienced a similar increase in its Hong Kong stocks which rose by as much as 5.5 percent.

During Saturday’s session of the National People’s Congress, Premier Li called for giving “top priority to development” while Minister of Transportation Yang Chuantang announced the construction of 50 new airports during the 13th Five-Year Plan, which will run from 2016 to 2020.

The airport constructions kicks off a three-year action plan to develop major transportation infrastructure in China. The National Reform and Development Commission has said more than 300 projects will be launched between 2016 and 2018.

The new airport construction will focus upon China north and west where much of the country’s underdeveloped regions are located. Fourteen conjoining poverty-stricken areas and 477 key counties have already been targeted for development by the ministry.

Additionally, the plan calls for upgrading airports in Harbin, Shenzhen, Kunming, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi’an and Urumqi in order to turn them into international hubs.

“Short-term growth”

According to Tom Orlik and Fielding Chen of Bloombery Intelligence, the familiar plan to invest in infrastructure as a way to support the economy is full of risks because “the focus is firmly on supporting short-term growth, with the deleveraging can kicked further down the road.” They write:

“The risk is that if stimulus is accelerated but reform continues to lag, the government could end the year with growth on target but even bigger structural problems to deal with.”

This past January, Deputy Director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) Dong Zhiyi had said China plans to build 66 new airports over the next five years. Costing  77 billion yuan ($11.7 billion), the transportation infrastructure upgrade would pay for eleven key infrastructure projects and 52 upgrades on existing civil aviation facilities.

Citing a rise in air travel that saw Chinese take four billion domestic trips and over 100 million international trips last year, the CAAC plans to not only increase the number of airports but also the number of domestic and international routes.

Ghost airports

However, expanding China’s airports is a move that hasn’t always paid off.

Xu Hongjun, a professor at the Civil Aviation University of China, admits that the expansion of airports in China is not good for everyone. “A lot of small airports are not doing well. They need a lot of subsidies from the central government. They were too optimistic,” said Xu.

In worst case scenarios, new airports become neglected after construction because they have failed to attract passengers. 

Following the 2007 completion of the Libo Airport in Guizhou at a cost of $57 million, the airport made headlines after receiving only 151 passengers in all of 2009.

Compounding the issue of airport expansion is the fact that Chinese airlines have been rated as some of the worst in the world, and that Chinese passengers normally have to endure numerous flight delays when traveling in China. Domestically, Chinese airlines are also facing increased competition from the country’s high-speed rail network, which offers passengers a more affordable way to travel within China.

The post Transportation, Infrastructure Shares Surge After China Pledge to Invest in Airports appeared first on The Nanfang.

China plans on developing 30 nuclear power plants by 2030 in countries along the Belt and Road initiative, a collection of countries along the Silk Road in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.

As ambitious as that is, it appears that China is looking to capture a larger share of the pie.

Sun Qin, president of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), said 70 countries are already planning or developing 130 nuclear power stations by 2020. That means competition to supply the technology for these nuclear reactors will be fierce.

“We also face very strong competition in the international nuclear market,” said Sun. “Countries like Russia, South Korea, Japan and the United States are all exploring the global nuclear market aggressively.”

As one of China’s three nuclear giants, the CNNC has in place bilateral agreements to develop nuclear energy projects with Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Britain, France and Jordan. Through previous cooperations, the CNNC has helped develop six nuclear reactors, five miniature neutron source reactors, twonuclear research facilities and one experimental reactor.

The CNNC has been using Hualong One, a third-generation nuclear reactor design, as a way to “accelerate” development of its flagship project in Fuqing, Fujian. As China Daily reported, it’s this technology and experience that the CNNC hopes to boost its nuclear energy exports.

However, China put the brakes on domestic nuclear development when the State Council Information Office expressed safety concerns in a white paper published a month ago. “China’s nuclear emergency response [system] still has certain inadequacies in terms of technology, equipment, human resources, capacity and standards,” read the report in part. The safety concerns were enough to shutter the construction of two next-generation nuclear power plants in Guangdong.

Just months before that, China had unveiled a massive plan that would see the construction of 110 nuclear power plants in China by 2030. Draft proposals for the upcoming 13th five-year plan (2016-20) would allocate 500 billion yuan ($78 billion) to build six to eight new nuclear power plants every year for the next five years. The plans had also called for the development of “floating, mobile nuclear reactors” that can be moved from one part of the sea to another.

While China looks to develop nuclear energy as a way to wean itself off fossil fuels that pollute many of its major cities, the urgency with which it does so is alarming some critics.

Physicist He Zuoxiu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has called the pace and scope of China’s nuclear energy ambitions “insane”. “China currently does not have enough experience to make sound judgments on whether there could be accidents,” He said, adding that “The number of reactors and the amount of time they have been operating safely both matter.”

According to the National Energy Administration, China has 30 nuclear power plants generating a capacity of 28 million gigawatts. Another 24 units are currently under construction.

The post China to Help Build 30 Nuclear Power Plants Along New Silk Road appeared first on The Nanfang.

Published last week, the paper on the country’s nuclear emergency response by the State Council Information Office expressed concerns with the country’s plans for nuclear energy expansion. “China’s nuclear emergency response [system] still has certain inadequacies in terms of technology, equipment, human resources, capacity and standards”, the paper said. The paper also acknowledged growing public anxiety over nuclear energy and promised to “answer public concerns in time” and “clear the doubts”.

Despite the “slower approval” of nuclear reactors, the report states that the central government is adamant it can achieve its goal of 58 gigawatts of installed nuclear energy by 2020. The setback follows last March’s lifting of a moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants imposed in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The paper went on to recommend the creation of a national emergency and rescue team to deal with potential nuclear power emergencies. The sentiment was echoed by Xu Dazhe, director of the China Atomic Energy Authority. “For us, the most important task now is to improve the safety level of nuclear construction, and prevent accidents from occurring via innovation, secure and reliable standards, as well as advanced technologies and equipment,” said Xu.

The safety concerns detailed in the white paper come at a time when China has already unveiled a highly ambitious plan to use large-scale nuclear power developments to wean the country off fossil fuels. Draft proposals detail a plan for China to allocate 500 billion yuan ($78 billion) to build six to eight new nuclear power plants every year for the next five years.

The long-term trajectory is to construct 110 nuclear power plants by 2030, a number of plants greater than even the United States. Part of that plan includes the development of “floating, mobile nuclear reactors” that can be moved from one part of the sea to another. However, such plans will undergo a “careful and scientific” feasibility review before being approved, said Xu.

Physicist He Zuoxiu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, called the pace and scope of China’s nuclear energy ambitions “insane”. He said nuclear energy is only feasible due to the compromises Chinese are willing to make. “Nuclear energy costs are cheap because we lower our standards,” he explained. “China currently does not have enough experience to make sound judgments on whether there could be accidents,” He added. “The number of reactors and the amount of time they have been operating safely both matter.”

Industry experts have downplayed the concerns of scientists such as He. Zhou Dadi, Vice Director of the China Energy Research Society, said last year, “Due to China’s mature nuclear technology and strict safety controls, serious accidents are unlikely to happen.”

The post China Admits If It Has A Nuclear Accident, The Country’s In Trouble appeared first on The Nanfang.

The massive infrastructure undertaking will not be cheap. To help cover the costs, China plans to invest upwards of 77 billion yuan ($11.7 billion) on civil aviation infrastructure this year alone. The investment will support eleven key infrastructure projects and 52 upgrades on civil aviation facilities, including work on new airports in Beijing, Chengdu, Qingdao, Xiamen, and Dalian.

Construction of Beijing’s second international airport is scheduled to be completed in June 2019. Work on the airport’s terminal and air traffic control facilities began last September, while construction of other support buildings is expected to start June of this year. Located to the south of the capital, Beijing New Airport will be the largest in the country. The airport will have seven runways and process some 72 million passengers a year.

Meanwhile, a new runway being built at the existing Beijing Airport, is anticipated to help accommodate an additional 8 million passengers a year.

Citing a rise in air travel that saw Chinese take 4 billion domestic trips and over 100 million international trips last year, the CAAC plans to not only increase the number of airports but also the number of domestic and international routes.

Xu Hongjun, a professor at the Civil Aviation University of China, admits that the expansion of airports in China is not good for everyone. “A lot of small airports are not doing well. They need a lot of subsidies from the central government. They were too optimistic,” said Xu. Perhaps the best example is the airport in Libo, Guizhou. Following the completion of construction in 2007 at a cost of $57 million, the airport made headlines after receiving only 151 passengers in all of 2009.

Compounding the problem is the fact that Chinese airlines have been rated as some of the worst in the world, and that Chinese passengers normally have to endure numerous flight delays when traveling in China. Domestically, Chinese airlines are also facing increased competition from the country’s high-speed rail network, which offers passengers a more affordable way to travel within China.

The post China To Build 66 New Airports Over The Next Five Years appeared first on The Nanfang.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) made the announcement on Monday, stating the network expansion is part of a three-year action plan to complete, ” broadband-based, integrated, ubiquitous and secure next-generation national information infrastructure.”

To realize the plan, the Ministry will continue to promote 4G services as well as develop next-generation 5G infrastructure, which will include installation of fiber optics in more than 80 percent of China’s villages.

The number of Chinese 4G users continues to grow at an astounding rate. China Mobile alone expects its 4G subscriber base to top 500 million next year, up from the current 200 million.

There is also China’s “Internet Plus” action plan, which aims to integrate mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data and the Internet of Things to develop e-commerce, industrial networks, and Internet banking.

The post China’s 4G Coverage to Go Nationwide by 2018 appeared first on The Nanfang.