“The speed at which China is developing its road transport infrastructure is truly admirable. China currently has 3.5 million km (2.2 million miles) of road. More than half of that is low grade, according to Reuters. China had only 53,000 km of expressways in 2007. The country is intent on building 80,000 additional kilometers of expressway over the next ten years, surpassing the length of the continental United States interstate highway network. Of course, the development of the logistics infrastructure will have monumental affects on the ease and declining cost of shipping goods throughout the country, and to neighboring countries.

“However, China’s bridges seem to be falling down – or falling apart – almost as quickly as they put them up. The Henan Road bridge, a busy throughway that spans the Suzhou Creek in Shanghai, in mid-2009 developed cracks as long as four meters in length, with chunks falling off the structure shortly after renovaton. Workers from the company that built the bridge used garbage – including plastic foam and leather bags – mixed with glue to fill the yawning cracks. The workers repairing the newly-built 120-meter Hanzhongmen Bridge in Nanjing were less creative than the Suzhou Creek crew during December 2009, and simply poured superglue into cracks that were large enough to fit one’s hand through.

Read more of the article in my latest column on logistics and supply chain management, in the March/April issue of CHaINA Magazine …