Last month, Premier Li Qiang stressed the need to “harness the exemplary and galvanizing role of megaprojects”....
Poor and inland provinces... have been the target of this effort as the central government has pushed a “strategic hinterland” strategy. Despite its isolation and relative poverty, Guizhou — roughly the size of Missouri — boasts an extensive infrastructure network, with 11 airports, tall bridges and new roads.
These megaprojects are “not bridges to nowhere,” [said Li Mingshui, a civil engineering professor at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu]....
ADDED: Why is the unusual word "hinterland" used? It's a word I sometimes use but only jocosely. I call my own location (in Wisconsin) a "remote outpost" and l sometimes say things like "here in the hinterland." It's funny to me to see it in the bureaucratic, leadenly serious context. I know it's translation from Chinese, so that might explain the oddness of this usage.
I invited ChatGPT to engage with my observation, and it said:
Exactly — the word “hinterland” has a very particular flavor in English, which makes its bureaucratic use in describing China’s strategy feel almost unintentionally comic. In everyday English, it evokes something remote, sparsely populated, and slightly exotic or provincial — the kind of place you might jokingly refer to in Wisconsin or the Midwest as “the hinterland.” It carries a whiff of quaintness, not high-level strategy.
In Chinese, the concept being translated is more like 战略腹地 (zhànlüè fùdì), which literally means “strategic bellyland” or “strategic interior region.” The word 腹地 (fùdì) has no humorous connotation; it simply denotes the area behind or around a key point that supports it — economically, logistically, or militarily. English doesn’t have a direct equivalent that’s neutral and bureaucratic, so translators often go with “hinterland,” even though it carries the jocosely “out-of-the-way” flavor in English....
So I see the Chinese use "bellyland" where we Americans would say "heartland." Or is it more like our "breadbasket," a reference not to the people but to the production of food? I'm told:
Fùdì can refer to any interior region that provides strategic depth, resources, and stability — not only food, but also manpower, industry, and infrastructure. The “belly” metaphor implies that the core (coastal cities, frontiers, or key economic zones) is nourished and protected by the hinterland.... Fùdì really combines aspects of all three [hinterland, heartland, and breadbasket], which is why translators sometimes awkwardly pick “hinterland” even though it feels off to native English ears.
संदेश
82 टिप्पणियां:
The glaring fault and ultimate failure of top-down command and control economies is that they strand capital. They use capital inefficiently and this doesn’t show quickly with public projects because the governments never declare bankruptcy.
The original Alaskan “ ridge to nowhere” would have connected Alaska’s 6th largest municipality, Ketchikan. to its airport,. The airport is on an island possessing the only flat area close to the municipality.
I take it they are switching from buildings to roads.
Big projects built under the worst features of both communism and capitalism. Could make the Italian bridge collapse look like a kid's sandcastle. JSM
USSR did the same thing till.. it went broke.
Haha. Someone has been watching C-SPAN…
40 years ago when Costa Rica was an end of the world kind of paradise we would drive from Florida live there for a couple months to surf it's pristine waves. The northern Tamarindo section was completely undeveloped and had a wild west vibe to it. It was difficult access. Shaky ferry's, wooden bridges, wet I'mwater river crossings, etc. the full meal deal adventure drive was now a luxury drive. . A few years back I thought I'd take the gf down there to show her a beautiful country and maybe catch a wave or two myself. Well was I ever gob-smackeded. The Chinese had been there in the interim. Huge bridges, beautiful paved roads the entire length of the Guancaste peninsula. All of those muddy ritty 4 wheel drive roads from Witches Rock to to the Beaches south were all luxurious drives. What a difference. Sigh. No more bushwhacking for waves romance there anymore.
Serves the same purpose as paying some people to dig holes and other people to fill 'em up again.
So I guess this means China has pretty much given up on inventing the flying car.
I take it Don Wang is not a great writer. Isn’t that what editors are for? AI would never write “a “strategic hinterland” strategy.”
My goodness gracious.
I shouldn’t say anything about writing really.
In the USA the the government make-work money goes to college grads instead of construction workers. They use it to build enormous egos and tall tales.
My sister worked in China from 2010-2015 as an engineer. I visited her often and travelled around the country. There are many buildings built as speculation, but trains, highways and bridges are all built with amazingly high standards and safety records. There may be some suspicious Belt and Road motivations behind this bridge or some mining that will have better access to markets, but China has not yet entered the make work bridge construction stage.
Grok confirms that China is in the process of building 30 nuclear reactors. The U.S. is building… zero.
https://jacobin.com/2025/09/china-us-breakneck-engineering-law i'm skeptical
This is hardly a Communist thing. While the USSR loved mega projects too, this situation is different.
China is China. It's the land of the ancient Great Wall mega project, and a whole bunch of similar walls built over a very long time. It's the land of the huge Forbidden City and ancient artificial rivers.
China is also an East Asian country, whereby the cities and urban design vibes of Japan, Korea, and China (and more) are not that different. See the post-WW2 rebuild of Tokyo.
China is also a nouveau riche culture, where the billionaire of the week wants to show off his billions. These 21st century projects are largely capitalistic p*ssing contests.
any engineers here?
want to explain to me WHY(HOW?) the bridge's "HEIGHT" is supposed to be impressive? They didn't even say height of the towers..
Nope, it's the the Royal Gorge thingie. a bridge over a Really deep chasm
Wake me up, when you're talking about the world's LONGEST bridge (or, world's STRONGEST bridge)..
Or, when you have a bridge that is multiple levels..
multiple types of vehicles (autos And trains)..
longest cantilever section in world..
TWO of the longest suspension sections in world..
OH, *AND* an ISLAND in the middle of the bridge.
DO ALL THAT, and Then you've got a bridge!
Shouting Thomas said...
Grok confirms that China is in the process of building 30 nuclear reactors. The U.S. is building… zero.
good morning, wake up, and smell the coffee..
https://www.powermag.com/nrc-approves-construction-of-first-electricity-producing-gen-iv-reactor-in-the-u-s/
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/us-sets-targets-triple-nuclear-energy-capacity-2050
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/us-to-triple-nuclear-energy-capacity
https://edireland.substack.com/p/the-first-smr-small-modular-reactor
The first SMR, Small Modular Reactor, in the US is under construction near the Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the US
A whiff of irony is in the air.
Christopher B said...
Serves the same purpose as paying some people to dig holes and other people to fill 'em up again.
Still a better investment than social security.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/09/12/watching-the-end-game-of-new-yorks-climate-madness-begin-to-play-out/ meanwhile
Billy Bob explained to me you need lots of electricity to get oil out of the ground or something…
Son: Isn't that bridge built yet?
Dad: No, son, and it won't be, until free hands on both sides of the big ditch can press the same button at the same time.
Son: Okay, I give... Oh boy, can I eat me breakfast now?
Dad: Only if you stay out of trouble, boy. Your shenanigans could cost me this election.
FYI: The emerging AI/robot economy sucks up incredible volumes of electricity. Musk’s new Gigafactory in Texas houses 50,000 processors. xAI’s Colossus supercomputer in Tennessee houses 200,000 processors.
A few weeks ago I read an article in either the UK Guardian or Telegraph that stated this bridge took less time to construct than a simple roadway overpass in the UK.
well they are not swarmed by lawyers, worst than locusts,
At one time the Soviets dedicated 30% of their budget to building the Moscow subway. They got something for their money. The Moscow subways are impressive. It might be the only enduring monument the Soviet system created. A lot of rural peasants starved to death, but the urban proletariat got a cool subway......That's the way it goes. The British imperialists sacked the world, but those great estate houses with their surrounding grounds are a marvel. Perhaps the Egyptian Pharaohs should have spent more money on crocodile removal and less on pyramids, but that's what they did......Don't make any hasty judgments. Give it a few hundred years. Maybe this is money well spent.
Yah, if you use a US timeline for comparison you have to account for the extra time needed for corruption and graft from politicians who are good at getting green lights on major projects then blowing all the money on building the political infrastructure to keep their job secure for a hundred years…
Maybe they should give it a name fitting for its magnificence and permanence. Something like...Evergrande? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c14g7r44566o
yeah thats the annoying interference of reality, the Green Nude Eel was all about that, heh
I wonder if translators pick "hinterland" to make the projects sound less like part of a possible military strategy.
"The Great and Powerful Oz"
in other communist news Michelle Wu, ahead by 50
points in the polls, so they say, will not face a formidable opponent in her re-election. Sub headlines in a boston paper are the corrupt community organizer/activist who stole blm money will change her plea- doesn’t say to what so we know. Backlash against flags at half staff ensues, sanctioned addict area regular accused of stuffing xer bra with drugs and cash, alleged migrant in government funded housing arraigned for alleged rape
…’hinterland’ is better than ‘hamlet’. I got sick of that one. What a piece of work is man…
reading the Boston globe rots your brain
‘tis the herald which I can’t read…can’t read the globe either but sister site boston.com clicks thru…
In the USA the the government make-work money goes to college grads instead of construction workers. They use it to build enormous egos and tall tales.
Otherwise known as HR departments and "_____" Studies chairs.
I subscribe to the Pillsbury view of the Hundred Years war, the Party is China's means to reassert itself against the concessions Chi Haotian's biological weapon exercise was a a party to that,
How much more efficient USA highway system be with bridge across Grand Canyon
Why do I think boasting about the worlds "tallest" bridge is hilarious. Who has ever been on a bridge and wished it was higher?
At some point the commies run out of SLAVES and their Potemkin village comes crumbling down.
Look at how the Chi Coms build sky scrapers. They are complete crap.
Hinterland is an important concept in geo-strategic thinking; China is also focused on the possibility of a US naval blockade. Imperial Japan had already used their conquest of Taiwan, which has been Chinese since the Middle Ages, as a springboard for a brutal and bloody invasion.
Probably the reason that the word sounds so quaint is that the US’s imperial thinking is not shared with the population the way, for example, German used to do.
Fauci approved the funding for the creation of COVID. It was a US project done in China because we imagined any accident could be contained away from our shores. Just like we had such labs right next to Russia’s border in Ukraine.
You don’t get to the position that the US is in globally just by innocently blundering from on crisis to the next.
well it wasn't just the US, the NHS and the French counterpart were involved, the Wuhan lab was like that facility in the second MI film
This "Tallest Bridge" title is silly. The bridge is built over an enormously deep canyon, but the bridge itself is much, much shorter.
They could make the bridge even "taller" if they dug down and made the canyon deeper. But that would be silly.
(TBF, the bridge is pretty big in its own right. It's just not the biggest using conventional measures of size, so they are emphasizing the "tallest bridge" silliness.
We constantly exploit any freedoms that rival powers give to their citizens to try to engineer regime change, and when those powers respond, like China did to the US backed attempt in Tiananmen Square, we use the crackdown as further evidence of the regime’s evilness in order to get good hearted people in the West to consent to wars, endless wars.
The news is what they want you to believe so that you will go along with what they want to do.
Guizhou, is near Yunnan which border with Myanmar, and Laos, so I don't see the strategic significance,
ah you gave yourself always with Tienamen,
Another way to see how silly the "Tallest Bridge" title is: if you built a little foot bridge over an enormously deep mineshaft, it would be the "Tallest Bridge in the World".
one recalls the interstate highway system was designed for national defense purposes,
"Jacosely" is a word I only use waggishly.
“Who has ever been on a bridge and wished it was higher?”
A: Led Zeppelin. But they never found it.
Prof: "So I see the Chinese use "bellyland" where we Americans would say "heartland." Or is it more like our "breadbasket," "
You were also raised by WW2 people, so you probably are familiar with the slang use of 'breadbasket' for the belly, as in old-time boxing reporters saying "oooh! RIght in the breadbasket!" Or the "organ" in Operation. CC, JSM
Why did they paint it that ugly color?
"China’s Global Governance Initiative
China has exported its village surveillance model to the Solomon Islands, where police are piloting fingerprint and data collection to curb social unrest.
China’s "Fengqiao" (枫桥) monitoring model — started under Mao Zedong in the 1960s to help communities mobilise against reactionary "class enemies" — has been reinvigorated by Xi Jinping to ensure stability in local communities.
A grid system operates across Chinese villages with each grid manager responsible for "monitoring blocks of households". It’s an "ideal mode of governance" for the CCP because "people mobilize in support of the Party's agenda and monitor each other so that social conflicts can be nipped in the bud before they escalate"."
https://x.com/Byron_Wan/status/1966758943683940451
@Peachy: "Look at how the Chi Coms build sky scrapers. They are complete crap."
Don't fixate on out-of-date stereotypes. Japan was the land of budget toys and paper umbrellas before Sony and Honda and Toyota and Nikon and Canon.
Some organizations in China are different now. They manufacture superb electronics, to include DJI drones, phones and tablets, solar products, and batteries. They are among the smartest people worldwide, even though the culture does involve cheap shortcuts, bullying, and enslavement too.
Just wait until China tries to invade Taiwan, and the latter takes out the Three Gorges dam. The model, of course, is Ukraine attacking Russian infrastructure. 40-50 million people living down river of the dam. Even an attack on the transmission lines coming out of the hydro generators for the dam could be devastating, possibly crashing the entire Chinese grid. It’s already silting like crazy, and was built on a seismic zone. It may do the same thing to downriver farming that the Aswan dam did to the Nile, by eliminating the yearly floods that brought in fresh earth (instead filling up the reservoirs behind the dams).
We don't have a neutral word to convey the "hinterland" concept. "Outskirts" isn't quite a synonym. "Backwoods" or "outback" isn't quite neutral. "Backcountry" might serve, but we don't use it very often. "Heartland" is positive -- maybe too positive. It's also ambiguous. If you're in the heartland, are you on the outskirts or in the center of things? Maybe it's just that Chinese can't complain or publicly resent being labelled "bellylanders."
"Hinterland" was used by Denis Healey to apply to a politician's non-political cultural and intellectual interests, and it's become a common term in British political writing. It seems very quaint now. Which American politicians have a cultural "hinterland" or even pretend to have one? Politicians who come from another field of activity -- business, the military, entertainment -- do have a hinterland of sorts, but not a cultural one.
John F. Kennedy had a hinterland of sorts -- an interest in British political history -- but his cultural and intellectual interests were largely faked. Herbert Hoover knew Chinese and translated Latin. Theodore Roosevelt wrote history. You'd have to go back pretty far to find Jefferson or Adams with their great reading and learning.
“strategic hinterland” strategy.”
Emphasis on “strategic”. Laugh at what seem like vanity projects but, if nothing else, the Chicoms have long memories. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria probably seems like yesterday in their thinking. I bet the Mongol invasion is often cited in planning sessions and there’s frequent chuckles about the amnesiacs of the West.
Lazarus (11:52am):
JFK's "cultural and intellectual interests were largely faked". Indeed. You just reminded me of something that R. Emmett Tyrrell (I think it was) wrote 30-40 years ago. He compared JFK inviting Pablo Casals to dine and perform at the White House with Nixon sitting down at the piano and plunking out mediocre performances of the most popular "chestnuts" of Chopin and Brahms. He said JFK's good taste was entirely borrowed from advisers, or from Jackie, and that he much preferred Nixon's "real corn" to JFK's "fake sophistication". I agree wholeheartedly.
Of course, there are many levels of corn below even the corniest Chopin and Brahms, but that's another question.
Longevity gives a certain kind of certitude. They know there’ll be a China when the Western democracies have long since crumbled into city-states and Muzzie mobocracies. Why not build infrastructure for all of China?
one might consider a PLA general that might fancy himself a warlord in the Future, wanting to curry favor
https://myglobalnews.net/china/20250801-plas-guizhou-flood-rescue-highlights-humanitarian-mission/
In World War II the Japanese captured Chinas major cities, but the Kuomintaing government retreated to Chungking and continued fighting from there.
In the Civil War Lee was trying to get to his strategic hinterland (the mountains) but Grant was able to cut him off and force his surrender.
This reminds me of California's "high speed" rail boondoggle. The state is massively in debt but they're going to spend over $100 billion on a train that almost no one will ride.
Can’t the CCP just make people move there? Communist Central Planners…
hanuman_prodigious_leaper said...
How much more efficient USA highway system be with bridge across Grand Canyon?
well,
there's Already a road across the Hoover dam, just south
and there's Already a bridge just below Glen Canyon dam north
Too Far away? want a bridge RIGHT NEXT to the grand canyon?
how about the Navaho bridge? across the Marble Canyon..
which is IN the Grand Canyon National park
(While the Navajo Bridges are officially located in the Grand Canyon National Park, the actual location is a little more complicated. The southeast approach to the bridges is located within the Navajo Nation, which was originally established in 1868 and had its boundaries extended west to the east rim of Marble Canyon prior to the construction of the first bridge in 1928. The northwest approach to the bridges is located within the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, having been established in 1972 (well after the construction of the first bridge, but a few decades prior to the construction of the second).
The bridges themselves span Marble Canyon. In 1965 the Marble Canyon National Monument was established and included the section of the Colorado River between the canyon rims from the (then) northeastern boundary of the Grand Canyon National Park (which was established in 1919) to Lees Ferry.[3] However, in 1975, the entirety of the Marble Canyon National Monument was added to the Grand Canyon National Park.[4])
Reminds me of Joe Biden spending 4 billion dollars and 4 years to build a grand total of 6 recharging stations.
Those Chinese have a long, long way to go to match American leftist inefficiency, graft, and utter haplessness.
China operates under communism, capitalism, and fascism with planned personhood as a negative incentive, and planned parenthood as a wicked solution, too. Free Tibet! Let my Muslims go? Labor and environmental arbitrage for welfare societies with Green deals.
“Billy Bob explained to me you need lots of electricity to get oil out of the ground or something…“
If you are cool, you run the pump jacks on old car engines using waste natural gas from the well.
China has a very high youth unemployment rate. They use capital for factories to make exports to the US and for the grand projects that they hope will employ people. But they don’t have enough capital to give half a billion people jobs yet. Like India, smart people but more than they can provide tools for.
Engineering wise there is little glory in the long and the tall, you just reproduce the same sections over and over to make it bigger. There is no miracle design that will let you go high tech on bridges without some new stiffer alloy to build with. I did some consulting work with a team on using mathematical optimization to design better trusses but we found only some minor savings.
Why don’t all the new lifesaving drugs come from China.
Meanwhile here is Canada our mendacious Liberal PM Carney just announced 5, yes Five! new, BIG, plans! New plans, to change Canada into an energy superpower! Without pipelines and with a CO2 emissions cap.
With more planning and a whole new department to guide the economy, from his gracious wisdom, into a future guided by government, confirmed by government, and lots of largess to the government’s friends.
It is to weep. No wonder Canadians are putting our money out of the country. No wonder private investment is looking elsewhere
Chicoms are serious people. What they're doing at home. They're doing abroad with the Belt and Road projects.
Well, maybe not wholly serious people. French village ghost towns deep in China's bellylands testify to that. But their government is definitely capable of pursuing long-term strategies of national aggrandizement. Ours -- not so much, at least not until recently.
Enigma @ 11:38
No. Peachy is right. In China that kind of construction is called, " Tofu Dreg". About as structurally sound as Tofu. It is endemic all over the country.
@Rusty & @Peachy: "In China that kind of construction is called, " Tofu Dreg". "
For sure. Tofu Dreg is the kind of fraudulent construction associated with the massive real estate scammer Evergrande Group. I also stated that Chinese culture has "cheap shortcuts, bullying, and enslavement," which you did not consider in your reply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergrande_Group
For additional examples of Tofu Dreg and the dark underbelly of China, check out the older videos from the Youtube channel "ADVChina" -- I've watched many. The two guys who ran the channel are married to Chinese women, but left China circa 2019 as international tensions grew.
Tofu Dreg. good name.
Mostly funded by American manufacturing off shored under the banner of "free trade" pushed by people that also borrowed $36 trillion on the backs of the unborn. I will endeavor to ggoogle map this wonderful edifice to American indulgences.
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