China has just broken ground on the construction site for yet another gigantic megaproject, a series of mega ship locks–colossal structures also known as “water elevators” or “water staircases” built into the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. The project will take around a decade to build and cost $11.4 billion.
The ship locks are designed to speed up the passage of 10,000-ton vessels through the dam, doubling annual throughput capacity to 336 million tons and reducing logistics costs. Policymakers say that current capacity is stalling urbanization and industrial integration along the Yangtze basin.
This is yet another example of China’s capacity to build absolutely massive infrastructure projects. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge is a 55km bridge crossing one of the world’s busiest shipping channels, shortening travel time between Hong Kong and Zhuhai or Macau from four hours to around 30 minutes. Another one is the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, one of the largest water-transfer schemes in human history, which moves water from the Yangtze basin to the arid northern China regions through thousands of kilometers of canals, tunnels, pumping stations and aqueducts. And perhaps the most visually stunning is the Beipanjiang Bridge, the world’s highest at 565 meter over the river, and links up Shuicheng in Guizhou province with Xuanwei in Yunnan. China’s engineering marvels are without a doubt unparalleled anywhere in the world—they are quite literally changing the surface of the planet. That said, the delivered economic benefits are often brought into question with many of these projects costing more than they generate.