China's $6.7B 15-mile bridge: Ambitions and Problems.

China's $6.7 billion Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge, at 15 miles long, eight lanes wide, and featuring artificial islands and an undersea tunnel, is set to open next year and will form a central plank in China's master plan to develop its Greater Bay Area into an economic and technological hub that can rival San Francisco, New York or Tokyo. However, critics say the bridges are also meant to serve another, more political purpose, by subsuming what are at present quite disparate regions into a single Chinese identity.