How China Builds So Fast

Last month China made headlines around the world for announcing it had built a fully functioning 1,500 room hospital in just five days. This remarkable feat of engineering and logistics was executed in response to a Covid-19 surge in Nangong, a city in Hebei province. It recalled a time earlier in the pandemic, when workers in Wuhan erected a 1,000-bed hospital in a little over a week.

Right now, even in the teeth of Coronavirus, China’s energetic builders are not only creating hospitals at breakneck pace, but moving startlingly quickly in the spheres of high speed rail, bridge-building and skyscraper construction. So today we’re putting on our hard hats and asking exactly how does China build so fast?

China’s modern economic boom is little short of dazzling. Ballooning national prosperity has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, urbanised its citizenry faster than any other civilisation in human history, and created some pretty awesome infrastructure projects along the way. Not least the world’s largest dam, the world’s biggest airport and a veritable forest of shiny new skyscrapers.

How China Builds So Fast

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Imagery supplied via Getty Images

[johnnguyen]

In my city it takes like 4 years just to get shovels in the ground.

[q_q]

Their construction speed is no joke. I went to China in 2018 and back again in 2020 (before the pandemic) and the landscape looked completely different than from 2 years ago

[sc]

In Canada, my city planned to have a ring road since the 1970s, now it hasn't been finished yet.

[saminhui]

Engineers mindset: Construction and Development
Lawyers mindset: Talk, Blame and Argument

[juneaco]

the infrastructure is really fast. i traveld from hangzhou to beijing in 3 hours on a high speed train. the train did not make sounds, nor was it bumpy, better than a plane

[omarijaphet]

I am from Kenya, China are building railway lines and road very fast.I feel great considering that i am a bio-medical engineer

[rynoxo]

Most of Chinese leaders were graduated from science / engineering school.

This made a huge difference.

[miaryan]

You can't fight poverty by just printing more fiat into the circulation. If you mean well for the people, embrace a transparent financial system.

[idtyu]

One thing people often over look, is how much China had re-forested over the last decade, a dessert North of Beijing has almost disappeared (and thus, less more sandstorm in Beijing), that is more impressive to me than this. Because we only have 1 earth

[zackcascio]

A video regarding the pros and cons of China’s and the US’s infrastructure without being heavily political? I applaud Tech Vision!

[jotiv]

.. California High Speed Rail is on time, just 20 years more to go.... oops already cancelled....

[chaobenson]

In USA, projects like this will take 2 years for the Design, 2 years for getting permit and then couple of years to build it. A one mile long road in front of my house already took 3 years, and not done yet.

[zhangchiyang]

Me: Who lives in Toronto, where workers are having chat and coffees with their mate on the road construction site. Also, they are all absent during winter and the road fixing lasted 4 years...

[npc]

This is what happens when politicians and lawyers don’t get in the way.

[longmarch]

Those emergent hospitals were actually carefully designed for proper ventilation, ICUs and quarantine areas. 3D simulation were run to minimize circulation in patient area, and to minimize impact to downwind nearby communities. It's much more involved than many people think.

[robin_be]

I like the pace of the video. The speech is very fluent and fast, yet understandable. There's no pauses where the music volume suddenly goes 300% etc etc. It's probably not for everyone, but I really like it. Kudos

China: BUILD BUILD BUILD
US: BOMB BOMB BOMB

[ghostofsolomon]

The quarantine hospitals in Wuhan were dismantled after 3 months when the surge was over. It's much more sophisticated than most people think, used AI to arrange materials from all over the country as well as over 40, 000 workers and 1, 000 field managers. The coodination was god-level.

[ukpkmkk]

In fact, if you are a practitioner in related industries, you can truly understand what a crazy project this is, how powerful the mobilization and organization ability are, and use all material resources in a short time at no cost to complete this great feat with super high efficiency and unimaginable work coordination.

[aleksanderbrygmann]

I've been to China, and my god what an impressive place. I wish we had such high speed rail between the capitals of Europe