The long game

摘要

Over the last 30 years, China has built a huge network of highways of about 4,000,000km of regular highways and more than 75,000km of expressways. A comparison of China's expressway system to the US Interstate bears discussion. The US began to build the Interstate system in 1956 while China did not start until 1987. Being the strongest economy in the world at that time, the US interstate system took off very quickly. By contrast, China was a very poor country in 1987 and the country's network of expressways was slower to develop. But eventually, it overtook the US and now has the greatest length of expressways of any country in the world.