To grossly simplify it, China is a lot less of a single nation than it claims to be. Historically, it was a collection of states that were bound together into a single empire, but most places still retained local identity over the imperial one, and most Chinese dynasties failed not because external pressures were raised to insurmountable level, but rather because the thin fabric tying the states together fell apart and the empire just disintegrated.
The CPC sees this, not any external threat or national level domestic challenger, as the primary threat and problem facing them in the future. To fix it, they employ a policy of trying to integrate the periphery by building infrastructure in such a way to make it easier to travel between provinces than it is to travel inside provinces, so that new economic structures arise which make the people in one province dependent on people in other provinces, and so that travel and marriage of people across the provinces would in the long term make the distinctions fade away.
I think Chinese political and economic leadership is absolutely world class and may some day be viewed by historians as the best the world has ever seen, especially if you consider both the breadth and speed of their accomplishments.
Are they really though? Indeed they abuse political dissidents and disallow free speech, but are there really that many people that violate these rules any more?
It's a valid worldview to say "that doesn't matter", but not everyone agrees with that stance. A (mostly) benevolent dictatorship is a perfectly valid form of rule if you ask me.
A kidnap victim getting Stockholm Syndrome doesn't make the kidnapping OK.
Bad rules are a problem even if people follow them.
And "bad" (often a matter of philosophical opinion) rules may be a problem, but how big of a problem, and should also be compared to the relative success of alternatives, such as "freedom" as enjoyed in the USA, and it's current trajectory of aggregate economic success and personal happiness. Personally, I think China doesn't have very much to be ashamed of, and much to be proud of.
I don't think you can categorize each bridge for its commercial or strategic value. Before it took you X hours to get from location Y to Z now it is less. It's not about connecting two potatoe farmers it is about connecting the county and modernizing its infrastructure.
A comment made in an a recent NYT article on these new Chinese bridges: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/world/asia/china-bridg...
> "If you don’t build roads, there can’t be prosperity,” said Huang Sanliang, a 56-year-old farmer who lives under the bridge. “But this is an expressway, not a second- or third-grade road. One of those might be better for us here.”
Expressways are sexy and useful if you are driving thru. But...I have the feeling they are overbuilding it in many places while not caring much about the less sexy roads that might improve local lives more. But then, such roads would never be talked about abroad and wouldn't do much for China's prestige (and therefore the official's in charge promotion).
The cars on the expressway have little bearing on the farmers below it. A rice farmer isn't going to be driving a new Audi or even a Toyota, even in rich Zhejiang, but definitely not in guizhou or Hunan.
In the video, the farmer interviewed talks about walking 15 min across the new bridge instead of the old way of walking 4 hours on the mountain paths with 30-40 kg of potatoes. And even if it wasn't suitable for walking, 50 farmers together can load their sacks of potatoes into an old pickup truck, pay a driver, truck owner and the expressway toll, and still all be better off.
Even if it was intended mainly to improve long distance transport, what would be the point of pricing the local farmers out of using it? It's unlikely to be capacity constrained.
IMHO you're having this backward. Without the major infrastructure spearheading the development of this region, there won't be interest (money) to overhaul the local roads and bridges.
Not that out of the way if people are using it so much
One of China's strategic goals is to rely more and more on internal demand for the products it manufactures, rather than on export markets.
That is only possible if regions are well connected, and is part of the reason the Chinese government is spending billions of dollars on highways, high-speed rail, tunnels, bridges and more.
Several years back I remember reading a statistic that for some products (I think it was flat screen TVs) that are produced in the south west of China, it was costlier in both time and money to transport the finished goods from the factory to Shanghai (a major port city) than it was to then ship them from Shanghai to the US.
This is just one of many bridges with remarkably similar construction. It looks like the Chinese have mastered how to put massive bridges wherever needed on schedule and to budget. They are building an interstate highway system and high speed rail out across the whole country, not letting the mountains get in the way. With the exception of ridiculously wealthy oil states, expect China to have the best roads soon.
So sure locals can benefit, but that's a side effect.
Not sure how sustainable it is over 50 years. The US did this 50 years ago. We made miles and miles and miles of highways. The the burbs did this 20 years ago. We build miles and miles of road to each and every house, even if the road gets 20 cars a day.
We are starting to pay the price now, as the maintenance bills come due. The federal gov't paid for the building, but the local is responsible for most of the repair. We can't afford to maintain them.
I do not know the lifespan of this bridge. 50, 75 years? At some point some repairs will be due, and it might cost a lot...