Salute to workers behind China's infrastructure prowess

As I continue driving across the mountainous Yunnan province in Southwest China, I marvel at its diversity. It is the most ethnically diverse province in China with 25 of the country's 56 ethnic groups. And a beautiful landscape dotted with lakes, canyons, tropical rainforest, red soil, irrigated rice terraces, volcanoes, hot springs and endless mountains, including snow-clad peaks.

But I am equally amazed by the new railways, highways, tunnels and bridges that make traveling and driving in Yunnan pleasant and convenient. Like in many other parts of China, the once inaccessible places in Yunnan are now within reach due to modern engineering marvels.

I have driven through the United States and Europe many times, but China's infrastructure is truly first class in the world. Thanks to some 4.7 million 5G base stations across the country, internet and cell phone services even in remote Yunnan villages are as good as in big cities. I can't say the same for my extensive travel experiences in Europe, including in Germany and France.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the late national security advisor in the Jimmy Carter administration, mentioned at a seminar in Washington 10 years ago that late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping wanted to thank him for his contribution to building US-China relations and invited him to travel anywhere in China.

Brzezinski told Deng he wanted to bring his children to China and take them on the Red Army's Long March route. But he was told the route was extremely challenging and some parts were almost inaccessible simply because there were no roads. Besides, Brzezinski's children were very young then.

When I visited the Red Army Long March Museum in Yuanmou near the Jinsha River, not far from the famous Yuanmou Earth Forest, I was pretty sure that Brzezinski's dream could come true today.

Without a doubt, the Person of the Year or even Decade award in China should go to the millions of workers and engineers who built those roads, railways, tunnels and bridges not just in Yunnan, but throughout China and even in many parts of the world, considering Chinese construction teams are building infrastructure projects across the world.

I have witnessed firsthand the light rails in Ethiopia, the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway; the railway linking Belgrade of Serbia and Budapest of Hungary and the Peljesac Bridge in Croatia.

The mind-blowing headline a decade ago that China used more cement in three years than the US did in the entire 20th century is a telling comment on how China has become an infrastructure juggernaut and a construction maniac.

But it is a good maniac in the sense that it has not only made traveling for people like me easier, but more importantly, it has made the life for people living there much better and helped boost the region's economic development.

No wonder that 12 of the top 15 construction companies in the world are from China, according to the latest 2025 ranking from Engineering News-Record, with China State Construction Engineering Corp Ltd, China Railway Group Ltd and China Railway Construction Corp Ltd and China Communications Construction Group Ltd occupying the top four spots.

China boasts 48,000 kilometers of high-speed railways, which account for more than 70 percent in the entire world. China has 190,000 km of expressways, also the first in the world and all built in the past few decades. China has constructed about 1.1 million highway bridges, including the world-famous Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge.

I thought of taking a detour to the Huajiang bridge, a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Kunming, but it has not yet reopened to visitors.

The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) will focus on upgrading infrastructure to be more technologically advanced, efficient and resilient. As I drive past many infrastructure construction sites in Yunnan, I want to salute the workers and engineers for their great contribution that has made China's achievements in infrastructure a miracle in the 21st century.

The author is a China Daily columnist.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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