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China's Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (#HZMB)

2,491 views · Published 23 October 2018 · 0:46 · Indexed 23 September 2026

Channel: People's Daily, China 人民日报 · 2018 · News & Politics

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Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday announced the opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (#HZMB) in Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province. The 55-km-long bridge will open to traffic at 9 am on Wednesday after nearly nine years of construction.

Five Things You Need To Know About Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge

1. What is Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge?

The 55-kilometer bridge, declared as one of the “Seven Wonders of the Modern World” and also called the “Mount Everest of Bridges” was one of the world’s most challenging megaprojects.

2. What’s the significance of the bridge?

The 100-billion-yuan mega bridge will reduce travel time between Zhuhai City on the Chinese mainland and the two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao from three hours to 45 minutes, enhancing the weak transportation links between the two SARs and mainland cities in the western area of the Pearl River Delta. The bridge will greatly enhance regional integration and drive economic growth and technological innovation.

3. What makes the bridge so special?

The world’s longest sea-based project comprises of four parts: a 22.9-kilometer steel bridge, two artificial islands, a submerged sea tunnel extending for 6.7 kilometers at a depth of 40 meters, and bridge sections that connect the main bridge to the cities.

With a designed lifespan of 120 years, the bridge is a milestone in the history of construction, as it is the biggest and most complex to construct cross-bridge tunnel transportation project ever.

4. Why the underwater tunnel?

The Pearl River Estuary is a world-level shipping channel, where around 5,000 vessels navigate at its busiest time of the day. Smooth traffic on both land and water needs to be guaranteed. Also, the bridge is located near the Hong Kong International Airport. With about 2,000 flights taking off and landing at the airport each day, the bridge cannot be too high. For all these reasons, it was decided that an underwater tunnel would be the best option. But this also required added support, so artificial islands had to be built

5. What were the technological challenges of the project?

Lauded as an engineering wonder, the bridge has been granted over a thousand patents. The 6.7-kilometer tunnel is the longest, deepest submerged sea tunnel in the world. To do it, Chinese engineers had to blaze a trail in installing deep-immersed tunnel tubes. “There’s no model for us to refer to as all the cases is shallow-buried tubes,” said Su Quanke, chief engineer at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Authority in a previous interview.

Engineers even spun a steel pylon with a height of 160 meters and a weight of over 3,000 tons at 90 degrees above the sea, an unprecedented practice in the history of the world bridge construction.

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