China is slated to inaugurate this year the world’s longest cross-sea bridge, which connects Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China.
The bridge-crossing, which took a total of seven years to complete, is 55km-long and six lanes wide, with four tunnels and four artificial islands.
The total steel used for the construction of the bridge is said to be 60 times more than that was required to build Eiffel Towers in the French capital, Paris. The bridge was constructed as an international partnership with multi-billion dollar project expenditure.
“We have included a lot of foreign experts from the UK, US, Denmark, Switzerland, Japan, and the Netherlands,” Gao Xinglin, Bridge team leader, news agencies. “They are from around 14 countries.”
The bridge will offer the opportunity to cut travel time in half, drawing mainland China, Macau and Hong Kong closer to each other with an hour’s commute.
It has drawn immense criticism for over-spending of funds and also some other fatal accidents.
However, Chinese authorities have welcomed the finished project, inviting this week foreign media capture a glance of the crossing whose opening date has not yet been confirmed.
“We hope that the friends from the press can take this opportunity to see the new accomplishment of China in the new era and fresh progress of the ‘one country, two systems’”, Song Ruan, deputy commissioner at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spoke while talking to reporters.
Hong Kong which was occupied by the British came under China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” agreement that ensured its freedoms that included a separate legal system.
But Beijing has ultimate and supreme control, and pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong counter it with the claim that it is increasingly clamping down on the city’s constitutionally enshrined freedoms.
With the estimates of around 40,000 vehicles a day to use the new bridge, which also includes shuttle buses running at 10-minute intervals.
The Mega Bridge is one of two major infrastructure projects set to be inaugurated in the region this year – the other one is a high-speed rail link to China.
“Both [projects] are being hailed as crucial transport links between the mainland and Hong Kong, but critics say it’s another attempt by China to blur the border,” said a journalist reporting from the Chinese city of Zhuhai.
The main criticism over the rail link is the plan to allow Chinese immigration facilities to operate in central Hong Kong, not over the border.
Some opine that this undermines Hong Kong’s autonomy under the “one country, two systems” agreement.
“It’s a kind of infrastructure telling the people of Hong Kong or the people on the mainland that Hong Kong and China are no longer two places,” said Kwok Ka-Ki, Hong Kong’s Civic Party lawmaker. “We are part of the mainland”.
China thinks that both the multi-billion dollar transport projects is to deliver Hong Kong more dividends with its integration by using one bridge to link three of the region’s biggest economies.
China is also said to be the future ruling economy all over the world.
You May Also Read: A Sigh Of Relief As Chinese Spaceship Crashes On Earth Without Any Loss Reported