ArticleManagerThe glorious and magnificent journey, each section will leave a deep imprint. China Road, China Bridge, China Port, Chinese car, big plane… Today, on the land of China, a transportation network extends in all directions, connecting cities and villages, connecting coastal and inland areas, connecting the world, bringing prosperity and people’s hearts.
Time cannot be reversed, distance cannot be displaced, and only variable speed is a magician who works miracles. In the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China’s railways, highways, water transport, civil aviation and other modes of transportation have shown leapfrog development, creating a world-renowned “Chinese speed” in the history of world transportation, laying a solid foundation for China to move from a transportation country to a transportation power.
From “zero” to cover 97% of the city – the highway network is accessible in all directions
What is a highway? In the 70s of the last century, few people in China could accurately describe its concept.
Highways with high traffic capacity and fast driving speed flourished in developed countries, but in the road traffic map of China published at that time, the expressway was still blank.
With the advancement of reform and opening up, China’s vehicles have increased rapidly, and the bottleneck of transportation restricting economic development has become more prominent. Do you want to build highways? Some people actively advocate construction, but others oppose it on the grounds that the investment is large, the land is large, and it is not in line with the national conditions.
On October 31, 1988, the first “titled” expressway in mainland China, the Shanghai-Jia Expressway, was completed and opened to traffic. The original two-hour drive was reduced to half an hour, and a new concept of speed gradually entered the public eye.
“A multinational company, which had previously chosen a site in southern Jiangsu for more than two years, had not been able to make a decision because of poor highway traffic, and then saw that the Shanghai-Jia Expressway was opened to traffic, and immediately went to Jiading to build a joint venture to build a chemical plant.” Zhao Hanrong, then deputy county governor in charge of industry and transportation in Jiading County (now Jiading District, Shanghai), said that domestic and foreign investors showed strong interest in coming to Jiading and setting up factories along the expressway.
In July 1989, the Ministry of Communications held an on-site meeting to exchange experience in high-grade highway construction across the country, and reached a consensus that China must develop expressways. The National Highway Construction Work Conference in June 1993 clearly put forward the national highway construction plan. Since then, China’s highway construction has advanced by leaps and bounds, and the increase is rare in the world.
By the end of last year, China’s expressway mileage had reached 136,000 kilometers, covering 97% of cities and prefecture-level administrative centers with a population of 200,000, ranking first in the world. The total length of highways has reached 4,773,500 kilometers, national and provincial trunk highways have connected administrative regions at the county level and above throughout the country, and rural roads have basically reached all organized villages, greatly alleviating the shortage of highway transportation capacity.
Every mountain opens the road, meets the water to build a bridge. In recent years, with the extension of the mileage of traffic, China has successively built a number of world-class bridges and tunnels. The world’s longest cross-sea bridge Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the world’s highest bridge Beipanjiang Bridge, the world’s highest highway special tunnel, Sichuan-Tibet Line Ji’ershan Tunnel, the world’s longest plateau railway tunnel, Qinghai-Tibet Railway Xinguanjiao Tunnel… The record of “longest, highest and largest” has been continuously written into the history of bridge and tunnel construction in the world, and “China Bridge, China Tunnel” has become a new brand to display China’s image. Among the top 10 largest span suspension bridges and largest span cable-stayed bridges in the world today, China accounts for 5 and 6 respectively.
From “Green Car” to “Fuxing” – High-Speed Rail Creates “Chinese Speed”
On September 1, 1996, when the train whistle sounded in the red land of Gannan, the old revolutionary area boiled. “I remember that at that time, an 83-year-old old lady rushed dozens of miles to Jinggangshan Railway Station to see the train that she had been waiting for for decades.” Recalling the opening of the Beijing-Kowloon Railway, Xiao Zhiyong, who lives in Taihe County, Jiangxi Province, was deeply impressed.
Previously, Xiao Zhiyong had never left the county. In the 22 years since the opening of the Beijing-Kowloon Railway, he has traveled north to Beijing and Tianjin, and south to Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Chongqing, thousands of miles away, is also “accelerating”. “You can take the train home later, which is faster than taking the highway, and it’s easier for people.” On January 25 this year, the opening of the Chongqing-Guizhou Railway made Mr. Yang, a native of Guizhou Kaili, who works in Chongqing, happy: “It takes about four hours to drive home, and it only takes two hours to take the train.” ”
Not only in the west, but also in the Dabie Mountains, in the province of a thousand lakes, in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area… The operating mileage of railways in the country has exceeded 127,000 kilometers, the high-speed railway has reached 25,000 kilometers, and the main channels of “four vertical and four horizontal” high-speed railways have all been completed in advance, and high-speed rail covers more than 65% of cities with a population of one million.
In the eighties and nineties of the last century, the “green car” with a speed of 40 kilometers per hour represented the railway symbol in Chinese memory. Until the beginning of this century, China’s railway transportation capacity was still insufficient.
In 2008, the first high-speed railway in China, the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway, was put into operation, which kicked off the era of high-speed rail in China.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China’s high-speed railway has risen strongly, rapidly opened the era of “flying close to the ground”, and achieved leapfrog development from scratch to the world’s first in a short period of time, becoming a bright business card shining in the world.
On September 21, 2017, the national railway implemented a new train operation map, and seven pairs of “Fuxing” Chinese standard EMU trains took the lead in achieving 350 kilometers per hour on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, shortening the travel time of more than 1,400 kilometers between Beijing and Shanghai to 4 and a half hours.
“Riding on the high-speed train, you can really feel the ‘Chinese speed’.” Foreign media so emotional. At present, China has the most modern railway network and the most developed high-speed rail network in the world. By the end of last year, the country’s high-speed rail operating mileage had accounted for two-thirds of the world.
From “pressing ships and cargo” to the largest throughput – Chinese ports stand tall in the east of the world
At the huge terminal loading and unloading site, I saw cranes and automatic guided vehicles busy, containers were lifted and placed accurately, and only a few people in the operation control center were using computers to command and control all this. This is the daily operation scenario of the world’s largest single and most comprehensive automation intelligent terminal, the fourth phase of Shanghai Port Yangshan Port Terminal.
A dozen years ago, Yangshan was an inconspicuous island. “What is port modernization? The fourth phase of the Yangshan Port Area Project is one of the symbols of port modernization and an important embodiment of the construction of a transportation power proposed by the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. “The contrast between the past and the present is full of emotion, and the memory of former Minister of Communications Huang Zhendong, who has worked in the port for 22 years, is overflowing.
In the 70s of last century, Huang Zhendong also worked in Qinhuangdao Port, China’s largest energy export port. “It is common for ships to press cargo in ports, and ships stay in port for a few days, a dozen days, or a few months. The captain of the outer ship mocked our port as ‘gold thrown into the sea’. Huang Zhendong recalled.
Support cargo owners to build their own special terminals, encourage ports to use foreign capital, and improve port loading and unloading efficiency… A series of policies and measures after the reform and opening up have mobilized multi-level and multi-faceted enthusiasm and greatly accelerated the speed of port construction. In the past 40 years, from south to north, many fishing villages have been reborn into vibrant new cities because of the port.
On March 26, 1980, the first cargo ship “Yao Jiang” engaged in foreign trade transportation in Zhejiang Province set sail from Ningbo and sailed to Hong Kong loaded with goods, opening a new era of Zhejiang’s foreign trade and transportation industry.
Chen Xiaozhao, who has been running at sea for 42 years, was the first captain of the “Yao Jiang” ship that year. What impressed Chen Xiaozhao was the scene of accompanying the ship to Hong Kong in the 80s of the last century. “We were all 500-ton or even smaller motorboats, and Hong Kong had at least 10,000 tons, 20,000 tons, or even more than 100,000 tons.” The old captain still couldn’t hide his excitement.
Since the reform and opening up, Ningbo’s export commodity structure has realized the transformation from primary products to industrial products. In the past, most of the “Yao Jiang” ships were primary processed products such as canned food, but now they have been transformed into electronic products such as mechanical and electrical products. In 2017, Ningbo Zhoushan Port became the world’s first port with an annual cargo throughput exceeding the 1 billion ton mark, ranking first in the world for nine consecutive years.
The port is the starting point and fulcrum of the Maritime Silk Road, which leverages the pattern of foreign trade development. From 1978 to 2017, the port’s annual throughput increased from 280 million tons to 14.007 billion tons, container throughput from zero to 238 million TEUs, and berths from 735 to 27,578.
Today, including Shanghai Port, Shenzhen Port and Ningbo Zhoushan Port, China’s ports occupy 7 seats in the top 10 ports in the world’s port cargo throughput and container throughput.
From militarized industry to extensive coverage – civil aviation “flies” into the homes of ordinary people
Compared to riding a car or boat, flying by plane was a scarce experience twenty or thirty years ago. Today, civil aviation has “flown into” into the homes of ordinary people.
The Alxa League of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is a “secret realm outside the Cyprus” located in the north of the Helan Mountains, with a vast and sparsely populated area, under its jurisdiction three banners, two and two five or six hundred kilometers apart. In the past, there was no railway in the Alashan League, and it took eight or nine hours for the people of the two flags to travel between them, whether by shuttle bus or by car, which was very inconvenient to travel.
In February 2011, the State Council and the Central Military Commission approved the Alashan League as the country’s first commuter aviation pilot. On December 17, 2013, with the launch of Okai Air’s “Xinzhou 60” aircraft, Alxa Commuter Airlines was officially launched, establishing a fast track for communication between the alliance and the outside world.
“The traffic conditions in Zhaotong are not what they used to be, and now you can buy a ticket to have a ‘walk-and-go’ trip.” On flight MU9708 from Beijing to Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province, retired employee Zhang Xingcheng opened his mobile phone album to review the entire journey. He and his family flew from Zhaotong to Xi’an, arrived in Beijing via Yan’an and Datong, and then flew back to Zhaotong. At present, Zhaotong Airport has opened routes to Beijing, Shenzhen and other cities. The more and more dense the route, the people have reaped more happiness.
The story of Alashan League and Zhaotong City is still playing out in many places. In the past 40 years, China’s civil aviation has developed from a militarized industry to a modern air transport system that is the second largest in the world. The number of civil airports increased from 78 at the beginning of reform and opening up to 229 by the end of 2017. The new airport under construction in Beijing will welcome its first passengers in October 2019, with an annual passenger throughput of more than 100 million passengers in the long term.
As an integral part of China’s comprehensive transportation system, air transport has developed from a subordinate supplementary status to a popular means of transportation, allowing more people to afford to sit on planes and get on planes. By the end of last year, civil aviation services had covered 88.5% of prefecture-level cities and 76.5% of counties in the country.
Connecting and sharing the breadth of heaven and earth. With the development of infrastructure construction, the increasingly close transportation network such as the well-connected road network, multi-level railway network, water transport network connecting trunk and branch, and aviation network connecting internal and external areas has woven a map of hope for the people to move towards happiness and beauty. (Gold Exchange)