Chapter I A Well-connected Network of Highways in China

Facing the giant expressway network of China, we can only try our best to draw a simple and precise framework. To this end, the topographic map of China provides a perspective. Based on the topographic map and the general picture of highway construction in China, we can imagine China’s highway climbing from the low step comprising plain and canal towns to the other two higher steps and connecting the three steps with each other. In other words, a fundamental expressway framework should be established first in essential areas at the third step of the terrain in China, including the North China Plain, the Middle and Lower Yangtze Plain, the Pearl River Delta, the Northeast Plain, the Sichuan Basin, and the Guanzhong Plain, before expressway construction to connect with each other and then ascend the second step that comprises three plateaus, and ultimately up to the first step at the highest elevation, that is, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Therefore, the achievements of China’s highway construction can be divided into five major categories, namely expressways across level and rolling terrains, expressways in canal towns and coastal areas, expressways over mountains and ridges, expressways through deserts, and expressways in sparsely populated plateaus. This is not a scientific but a literary categorization intended to help us conjure up the pictures of different types of expressways. Such categorization will help us better understand the giant expressway network and China’s achievements in expressway construction.

At the beginning of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, there were merely 80,000 kilometers of operational highway. Under such circumstances, the top priority for highway construction back then was to serve national security. Therefore, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) built front-line highways in Fujian and Hainan and rose to be the leading force in the highway construction of New China. During the same period, the highway construction army built the Qinghai-Tibet and Sichuan-Tibet highways on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at an average altitude of 4,000 meters, creating a miracle in the worlds’ history of highway construction. The older generation of highway builders used simple tools like shovel and pickaxe and dedicated their prime years and even life to building highways and bridges across the vast and desolate lands covered with ice and snow, canyons, and Gobi deserts in Tibet, Sichuan, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Gansu, and other places.

Despite sparing no effort, the highway construction in China had been progressing relatively slowly until the launch of reform and opening up. China initiated the construction of the national trunk highway system in the wake of reform and opening up. In November 1981, the state promulgated the Notice on Delimiting the Expressway Network of China to build nearly 110,000 kilometers of national arterial highways connecting the capital city Beijing with all provinces(autonomous regions, municipalities), major military regions, important large and medium-sized cities, port hubs, as well as industrial and agricultural bases. However, highway construction during this period could not meet the needs of economic development. In the early 1990s, the average length of highways per capita in China was less than 8 cm.

In October 1988, the Shanghai-Jiading Expressway was completed and opened to traffic as the first expressway in mainland China. However, expressway remained quite a new concept back then. At the time, all manner of vehicles, including cars, ox carts and wagons, mingled with each other on national highways, leading to high accident rates and low efficiency. The average speed of cars was only 30 km/h Given a small number of cars across the country, some regarded expressway as a waste. A group of people passionately advocated the expressway construction in China after being amazed by the welldeveloped expressways during their study tours in Europe. In 1989, the high-grade national highway construction site meeting held in Shenyang answered whether to build an expressway in China. The meeting concluded with a consensus to “speed up China’s expressway construction.” At the time, China, as a country with vast land, ranked behind 20th globally in terms of total expressway mileage.

In 1993, the National Highway Construction Conference held in Jinan answered “how to build national expressways” and determined to concentrate efforts on completing the first phase of constructing national trunk lines. In the same year, the State Council officially promulgated and implemented the “Five Vertical and Seven Horizontal” National Trunk Highways System Plan. China’s highway construction has since taken off, entering a golden era of development, followed by the completion of Shenyang-Dalian, Beijing-Tianjin-Tanggu and Jinan-Qingdao expressways.

While comprehensively advancing the construction of “Five Vertical and Seven Horizontal” trunk lines, the government reviewed and assessed the progress. In December 2004, the State Council’s executive meeting adopted the National Expressway Network Plan to build about 85,000 km of expressways. It is also known as the “7918” network, comprising 7 Beijing radials, 9 N-S highways, and 18 E-W highways. At the end of 2007, the construction of “five vertical and seven horizontal” national trunk highways was completed ahead of schedule. With 15 years of hard work, highway builders fulfilled the dreams of generations of Chinese twelve years earlier than expected. By then, the mileage of China’s highways reached 35,000 kilometers.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, highway construction in China has entered a new stage. In 2013, the State Council approved the National Highway Network Plan (2013-2030) to build another 118,000 km of expressways. While the “7918” network had been put in place, this new plan expanded the expressway network to comprise “7 Beijing radials, 11 N-S lines and 18 E-W lines.” This network features a gridbased pattern consisting of “ordinary national highway + national expressway.” It benefits more than 1 billion people and directly serves more than 90% of the eastern region, 83% of the central region, and nearly 70% of the western region. On average, this expressway network is merely a 30-minute drive away from almost all nodes in the eastern region, a one-hour drive in the central region, and a two-hour drive in the western region.

Over the past 40 years since the reform and opening up, the state introduced four expressway network plans, namely the National Trunk Highway System Plan in 1981, the “Five Vertical and Seven Horizontal” National Trunk Highways System Plan in 1993, the National Expressway Network Plan in 2004, and the National Highway Network Plan in 2013, with a gap of about ten years between each. Each plan has been based on the profound understanding of the reality of socioeconomic development in China and far-sighted views about how the highway construction will underpin the national socio-economic development for a long time to come. This presents a considerable challenge for planners. While recalling the process of formulating the “Five Vertical and Seven Horizontal” National Trunk Highways System Plan, Mr. Zhou Haitao, the former chief engineer with the Ministry of Transport, said, “This is a 30-year plan. We were worried whether such judgment and conclusion were correct. Should the conclusion be wrong, it would be a huge obstacle to the development of China’s highways. Now, we can finally set our hearts at rest.” These comments were made in October 2018.

Connecting dots into lines and creating a network with lines, China has started from scratch and built the world’s largest expressway network extending 160,000 km.

Table 1 Comparison of highway mileage between China and the US

Source: The data for China’s highway mileage is sourced from the statistics of the Ministry of Transport. The China Highway magazine provides the data concerning the US highway mileage.