Introduction

It took China merely over 30 years to build up the world’s largest expressway network from scratch, comprising a variety of highways, bridges spanning large rivers, gorges, mountain creeks, and even estuaries and gulfs, as well as tunnels passing through lofty mountains, rivers, lakes and seas.

This network has served more than one billion Chinese people, connecting all important transportation hubs across the country. On average, the network is merely a 30-minute drive away from almost all nodes in the eastern region, a one-hour drive in the central region, and a two-hour drive in the western region. Therefore, as a convenient infrastructure network for the flow of people, vehicles, and logistics, it has been compared to the arteries and blood vessels for China’s development.

Thanks to generations of Chinese people’s dedication, wisdom, and efforts, the blueprint has been translated into practice in China, adding to the Chinese miracle.

“To get rich, build roads first”

For a better sense of China’s expressway network, we could first look at China’s topography.

Generally speaking, the terrain of China descends from the west to the east, forming a three-step “staircase.” On the first step lays Qinghai- Tibet Plateau in southwestern China. The second step extends from the east edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the western parts along the “Great Khingan Range-Taihang Mountains-Wushan Mountain-Eastern Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau.” On the third step are the eastern parts of the line and the land above sea level. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at the first step, at an average elevation of more than 4,000 meters, is covered with continuous snow-capped mountains and glaciers, as well as vast lakes and grasslands. It is also the source of multiple significant rivers. The terrain on the second step consists of three plateaus, namely Inner Mongolia Plateau, Loess Plateau, and Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. The Inner Mongolia Plateau incorporates most of the Inner Mongolia Region and parts of Gansu Province, Ningxia Region, and Hebei Province. At an altitude of around 1,000 meters, the Inner Mongolia Plateau features an open and flat terrain, with slight undulations, mainly consisting of grasslands and deserts. The Loess Plateau is covered with a loose layer of loess shaped by rainfall into thousands of gullies, with an altitude of 1,000-2,000 meters. The terrain on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau is undulating, rugged, and steep. The third step mainly comprises several extensive plains and hilly areas, including the North China Plain, the Middle-lower Yangtze River Plain, the Pearl River Delta, the Northeast Plain, and the hills in Shandong and in the southeastern China.

The three steps are by no means evenly distributed, covering ten mountain ranges, four basins, and three plains.

The population is primarily distributed in the southeast, while the economically vibrant areas are mainly in the central and eastern regions. The Chinese geographer Hu Huanyong proposed in 1935 that the land to the west of the Heihe (in Heilongjiang Province)-Tengchong (in Yunnan Province) Line accounts for 56.3% of China’s total areas but is home to only about 5.6% of the Chinese population. The line was dubbed “Hu Huanyong Line.” It highlights the unbalanced distribution of the Chinese population. The North China Plain, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta are most densely populated, while Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet are sparsely populated. Take the population distribution within the same province for example. In Sichuan Province, the population density in Chengdu Plain is about 500 people per km2, as opposed to less than one people per km2 in mountainous areas of Qionglai that are just a few steps away from Chengdu. For another example, the alluvial land along the river in Anhui Province has a population density of over 300 people per km2, compared with less than 30 people per km2 in Huangshan city and other areas in southern Anhui province.

The distribution characteristics that people have developed over thousands of years are unlikely to change overnight, and it takes time for people to build a new pattern. Therefore, for socio-economic development, people’s exchanges, coordinated regional development, and national security, it is imperative to link the three steps with each other, connect the plateaus, plains and basins, and even cut through the mountain ranges. China is in need of a highway network that’s convenient for the smooth flow of people and goods, accessible from all directions, conducive to international exchanges.

This is the mission of China’s expressway construction.

Between the founding of New China and the launch of reform and opening up, China made some achievements in highway construction, but the overall progress was slow. The reform and opening up marked the beginning of building the expressway network of China. In 1981, the Notice on Delimiting the National Trunk Highway System announced the plan to build a national highway with a total mileage of nearly 110,000 kilometers. In October 1988, the Shanghai-Jiading Expressway, the first expressway in mainland China, was completed and opened to traffic, fulfilling the zero breakthrough in highway construction. In 1989, it became a consensus to “speed up China’s highway construction.” In 1993, the State Council officially promulgated and implemented the “Five Vertical and Seven Horizontal” National Trunk Highways System Planning. China’s highway construction has since entered a golden era of development. By the end of 1999, the operational length of expressways in China exceeded 10,000 kilometers, ranking the fourth in the world, and hit 16,000 kilometers by the end of 2000, ranking the third in the world, before climbing to 19,000 km by the end of 2001, ranking the second in the world. In December 2004, the State Council adopted the National Expressway Network Plan, also known as the “7918” network, comprising seven Beijing radials, nine N-S highways, and 18 E-W highways. At the end of 2007, the construction of “five vertical and seven horizontal” national trunk highways was basically completed ahead of schedule, extending 35,000 km. In 2013, the State Council approved the National Highway Network Plan (2013-2030) to expand the expressway network to comprise “7 Beijing radials,11 N-S highways and 18 E-W lines.”

The great thing about Chinese road builders is that they always work hard to build the network ahead of time. As of the end of 2020, the total mileage of China’s expressways reached about 160,000 kilometers, constituting the world’s largest expressway network that covers 99% of cities and prefecture-level administrative centers with a population of over 200,000.

The driving force of China’s highway construction

It can be seen that in addition to the huge invisible force of urgent needs for economic and social development, there are at least three driving forces behind China’s repeated success to turn the road network blueprint into reality ahead of schedule.

The first driving force is the road builders.

As noted by Lu Xun in 1921 in a story about his hometown,“Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made.” These words have become an inspirational quote for many Chinese. However, roads on the earth often require painful efforts by numerous people. In the case of road construction in China, the decisive force underpinning the superior highway network has been the persistent efforts of millions of and generations of road builders. For more than 70 years, they have contributed to China’s highway network with hard work, outstanding talents, and great courage. Some concentrated their energy and efforts on drawing up the blueprints, some dedicated to breaking through the shackles and conducting reforms, and some more people braved the wind and dew and overcame all obstacles to put in place a magnificent highway network across the vast land.

In a nutshell, this has been a journey of cutting a way through when confronted by mountains and building a bridge when blocked by a river. To build a modern transportation infrastructure from scratch and in utter destitution, fill the huge gap with other countries, and overtake them, China needed people boasting a spirit of forging ahead and making selfless dedication. The transportation infrastructure construction, primarily characterized by arduous conditions and harsh environment, is meant to building roads, bridges and ports where there is no way to go. Therefore, the builders must overcome physical and mental challenges, work hard, and forge ahead courageously.

Generation after generation of great road builders have worked hard and selflessly to cut a way through when confronted by mountains and build a bridge when blocked by a river. Thanks to them, China’s highway network has undergone tremendous changes. Today, a new generation of builders have created magnificent roads, bridges, and tunnels across the northern plains, canal towns to the south of the Yangtze River, lofty mountains, Gobi deserts, and large rivers and seas. They are taking this cultural tradition to the world.

They have built a century-old and immortal infrastructure and fostered a great spirit that has been passed down from generation to generation.

In this process, China has also made constant efforts to explore the highway construction management system. China has gradually developed a system of holding the legal person responsible for projects, a project supervision system to fulfill the responsibility of supervising management, a bidding system for orderly competition, and a contract management system to clarify the main responsibilities and rights of market players.

The second driving force relates to the investment and financing model.

The construction of a highway extending 100,000 kilometers requires an investment of tens of trillions of yuan. Where does the money come from? Early highway construction relied solely on fiscal investment that fell far short of the substantial capital needs for building a large-scale expressway network. In 1984, the State Council made the decision to “borrow loans from banks for road construction and pay back the loans with toll collections.” In 1985, the State Council began to levy vehicle purchase surcharge to fund the highway construction. These two policies, especially the former one, created ample sources of funds for expressway construction. As the first example, the Beijing-Tianjin-Tanggu Expressway is a cross-provincial expressway partly funded by the Chinese government’s loans from the World Bank. In 1984, the State Council approved the Beijing-Tianjin-Tanggu Expressway on the shortlist of projects for loans from the World Bank. Subsequently, the Chinese government and the World Bank signed the loan agreement.

A set of models based on “borrowing loans from banks for road construction and paying back the loans with toll collections” could be summarized as “national investment, local fund-raising, social financing, and the use of foreign capital.” In reality, however, the efficiency of“utilizing foreign capital” to build expressways seemed to fail to keep up with China’s economic growth. It took nearly 10 years to complete the Beijing-Tianjin-Tanggu Expressway from the time it obtained the approval. In this context, “national investment and local fund-raising” became the basic models for expressway construction that lasted for a long time. According to the analysis in the early 20th century, among the investment and financing system for highway construction, loans from commercial banks and non-commercial banks accounted for more than 60%, the central government input made up less than 10%, and local governments mainly invested the rest, plus foreign and private capital investment. Despite doubts, expressway toll is a reasonable, effective, and efficient way. The principle of payment by users guarantees fundamental fairness. Therefore, for a long period, the investment method of “borrowing loans from banks for road construction and paying back the loans with toll collections” served as the most important investment and financing method for expressway construction. It has also become a long-term policy direction.

Local governments have played an active role in the process of attracting social capital. A typical case in recent years is Guizhou province. Located on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, Guizhou is a relatively backward region in western China, with mountainous areas making up 93% of the province’s land. In 2008, in the belief that the first and foremost thing for accelerating development is to eliminate the traffic bottleneck, Guizhou Provincial Government set the goal of building 4,500 kilometers of expressways within 10 years to connect all counties. This is a great vision, but it needs to figure out “where to get money.” Subsequently, Guizhou Province joined hands with China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) to build expressways under the BOT (build-operate-transfer) model, a pioneering exploration in China. This model was later collectively referred to as the PPP (Public-Private Partnership) model. The exploration enabled Guizhou located on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau to build more than 4,000 kilometers of expressways just in eight years, achieving the goal of connecting all counties by expressway three years in advance. As commented by local media, “With the traffic boom in Guizhou under way, the spring of development will not be far behind!”

The third driving force is technological progress.

The starting point of highway construction in China is not high. For a long time, the innovations of Chinese highway builders have promoted the leaps and bounds of China’s highway construction time and time again.

China has built highways, bridges and tunnels across the plains in northern China, canal towns in southern China, hilly plateaus, lofty mountains, deserts, frigid highland zones, rivers, estuaries, and offshore areas. Underpinning all these is a host of technological innovations and advances.

Highway construction begins with a survey and geometric design. The early survey and design mainly relied on manual operations by technicians, and the workload on site was heavy and intensive. As many highways in complex terrain began to be constructed, the terrain conditions kept getting worse, geological conditions more complicated, and the construction conditions more terrible. Under such circumstances, traditional survey and design technology were no longer applicable, making it imperative to develop new technology in this regard. Ultra-low-altitude, large-scale, high-precision digital aerial photogrammetry (DPS/aviation technology) has been a revolutionary innovation that “digitizes the earth, moves the earth home, and makes it possible to design from home.” In 2001, Chinese highway builders began to study the application of high-resolution satellite imagery and airborne lidar measurement technology, focusing on the design of construction drawings and the automatic acquisition of high-precision and massive topographic data. China went further to integrate innovations. The remote sensing technology for engineering and geology, widely applied in aviation, aerospace, and lidar measurement, combined with a series of computer processing of the collected data, produced a digital ground model for design. Now, aerospace remote sensing, unmanned aerial vehicles, virtual reality, and BIM technology, among others, have promoted the continuous progress of survey and design technology.

A slew of comprehensive road treatment technologies and complete sets of engineering technologies have been developed for soft soil, loess, desert, permafrost karst, and other foundations in highway construction. The technologies for modified asphalt, anti-skid road surface, composite surface, epoxy asphalt, and rubber asphalt have been explored and widely applied. A series of construction machinery, such as large-scale compaction machinery, paving machinery, and mixing equipment, along with modern testing and experimental equipment, have been tested and applied. All these have facilitated the smooth progress of highway construction in terms of road surface and roadbed.

Bridges represent the most dazzling achievements in highway construction. Over the past 30 years, Chinese builders have made painful efforts on the design of bridge structural system, the core material research and development, key construction technologies, and innovations of construction equipment. As a result, they developed the bridge construction technology system with independent intellectual property rights, continued to improve the bridge construction technology and overcome increasing difficulties, and built many bridges that represent the highest level of bridge construction in the world. Separately, based on mastering traditional tunnel construction technology and Chinese highway builders have achieved significant technological breakthroughs in ultra-long drill-and-blast tunneling, ultra-large shield tunneling, and super immersed tube tunneling. Today, China has outperformed its counterparts in the world in terms of bridge and tunnel construction technology.