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China unveils longest sea-crossing bridge

Cnn Online
As we drive down the eerily deserted Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, the murky waters of the Pearl River Delta stretch as far as the eye can see. There is no land in sight.
Spanning 34 miles (55 kilometers), this is the longest sea-crossing bridge ever built. Guo Xinglin, assistant director and senior engineer at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Authority, meets us half way along. As we are buffeted by a strong wind, the tough conditions his construction crew experienced, as they perched on precarious platforms, working miles from land and high over the water, are evident.
Xinglin is visibly proud of his country's monumental achievement.
Due to open to the public this summer, this long snake of bitumen will connect a relatively small city on the Chinese mainland with the two Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
But since the bridge was first suggested in 2003, it has stirred controversy. This massive span of concrete and steel is not just proof of China's ability to build record-setting megastructures - it's also a potent symbol of the country's growing geopolitical ambitions.
As tensions simmer between the mainland and Hong Kong and Taiwan, and China continues to claim territory in the South China Sea, the bridge can be seen as a physical manifestation of the Chinese leadership's determination to exert its regional influence. Critics have also questioned the environmental and human toll and the immense financial cost of the project.
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge is a central plank in China's master plan to develop its own Greater Bay Area - a region it hopes will develop to rival the bay areas of San Francisco, New York and Tokyo in terms of technological innovation and economic success. The official narrative is that greater regional integration will drive economic growth.
Home to 68 million people, the Greater Bay Area covers 21,800 square miles (56,500 square kilometers) in central southern China, and encompasses 11 cities - Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities across Guangdong province.
Marcos Chan, head of research for commercial real estate consultancy CBRE Hong Kong, Southern China and Taiwan, says the region is already very vibrant and economically productive. "It takes up less than 1% of the land area of China and is home to less than 5% of the population but produces 12% of China's GDP." When compared to countries around the world, he says “the Greater Bay Area already has the 11th largest economy."
The bridge will slash journey times between the three cities from three hours to 30 minutes, putting them all within an hour's commute of each other.
"At present, the economic distribution is very uneven between the Pearl River Delta's east and west coasts," says Chan adding that, “the cities on the eastern side such as Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Dongguan are more economically developed than cities on the western side including Zhuhai, Jiangmen and Zhongshan."
He says the bridge will make it easier for goods produced by factories on the west side to be exported from air and sea ports on the east side - including Hong Kong's international airport, the busiest cargo airport in the world.