China is the world's second-largest economy. Along with the history of rapid growth, it has become one of the most developed transport networks in the world. It has the world's largest highway network carrying 80 million tons of freight every day. It has the world's largest high speed rail network that connects hundreds of cities as well as a huge air transport system with 227 airports. Seven out of ten of the world's largest ports are on China's coasts. This huge transport system is the backbone of the Chinese economy. But progress never sleeps. The network continues to develop night and day quantitatively and qualitatively, meeting the challenge of getting people and goods around the nation. The Dege County in Sichuan Province is home to the world's largest printing house
of Tibetan scriptures. They have 320,000 printing blocks accumulated over the last three centuries. The printing house reproduces 70%
of the world's Tibetan classics covering Tibetan medicine, history, and culture which are delivered to all parts of China. Today, master Dega is dispatching a number of these classics to Kang Ding Take care on the road. All right. The road is dangerous ahead. Please slow down. Dege is nearly 600 kilometers from Kang Ding, a 24-hour ride. The biggest obstacle in road is the Chola Mountains that rise to 6,168 meters above sea level. For centuries, it has been a major barrier between the Tibetan region and the rest of China. The narrow dirt road that connects this part of north Sichuan to Tibet was built over 60 years ago. It snowed over for all but 2 months of the year. A breakdown can cause a traffic jam which lasts for days. It is notorious to drivers as the most dangerous road in China. When the ice and snow are heavy, there is no way for a trailer to go. If it's blocked, our oil won't get there. It will be completed soon, in a few days. This struggle will soon be over. For five years, a huge project has been underway beneath the mountains. The Chola Mountain Tunnel will be the world's longest and highest road tunnel. Construction work on the high plateau (Deng Weizhao, Resident Doctor
Chola Mountain Tunnel Project)
is different to that on the plains. Oxygen in the air is just above 48% of normal. So workers in the tunnel can only stay an hour at most before they have to take an oxygen break. (Jiang Zhangbao, Manager
Chola Mountain Tunnel Project)
At 4,300m above sea level, staff turnover is very high. If it is a normal tunnel, 200 people should be able to finish the job. But we have already employed more than 2,600 people on this project. The harsh environment puts every worker under huge pressure. The project is entering the final stage. The tunnel will be finished in a month's time. Thanks to the efforts of thousands over the past five years, it will then take just ten minutes to cross the mountains and to do so in safety while sheltered from the weather. (Constructed by China Railway First Group
Chola Mountain Tunnel) Hello, I'm here to collect mapping data on the tunnel. OK. Thank you. Today, Huang Qijin is going to be the first non-engineer to drive through the tunnel. His car is equipped with a 360° laser radar, continuous image capturing camera, and a positioning data acquisition system. This allows him to collect road information in real time as he drives along. I can collect mapping data on about 300km per day with this car. A trip usually lasts about 90 days. Huang Qijin also has to cope with altitude sickness as he drives through the world's longest high altitude tunnel. In under 20 minutes, all the mapping information from the tunnel has been collected. Huang Qijin will continue mapping along the highways, collecting data that has never been recorded before. 2,700 kilometers away in Beijing, Huang's data from the Chola Mountains has been received. An hour later, an electronic map outlines the new road. When it opens to traffic, this new map will be sent to every mobile phone user through the internet in less than a second. China has the planet's largest highway network. Over 200 million vehicles carry 15 billion passengers and 33.6 billion tons of cargo a year and the network is still expanding. Other bold projects, like the Chola Mountain Tunnel, will open to traffic. China's highways now extend to every corner of the country. For Lu Shujie, the highways are key to his family's livelihood. Yunnan's Huaning County has a uniquely mild climate that allows it to produce the earliest citrus harvest in China. However, the fruit only remains in peak condition for a week. Before the highways opened, the fruit could only be sold in surrounding cities within a few hundred kilometers from Huaning. Now, with the national highways network, Lu Shujie is able to travel across the country in a couple of days, taking the fresh flavors of Yunnan to north and northeast China. And you have to put it down. You can rest assured once it's loaded. We often transport these. I'll trust you with it. Okay. Chuang, take a look. This leads to Yuxi. Check it out with your mobile phone. See if there is an exit. Lu's son-in-law is his co-driver. Using satellite positioning can pick the quickest route to his destination. I used to drive in southwestern China. The roads were bad. Fruit was often damaged. Now with this highway completed, the road condition is much better and driving time is much shorter. To deliver his cargo of fresh fruit to Beijing, 2,700 kilometers away, and sell it at good prices, Lu Shujie has to drive overnight. The highways at night are rarely quiet. Many items, be they fresh fruit and vegetables or courier packages, need to reach the city before it wakes up in the morning. Every 24 hours, more than 20 million trucks like Lu's run across this huge highway network day and night. They carry almost 85 million tons of cargo, which accounts for nearly 80% of China's total freight volume The network now spreads to 4.69 million kilometers. Of that, 130,000 kilometers are freeway, the longest in the world. China's highway network has become a huge engine to promote its social development. But you can find that too many vehicles are running empty on the road, eating away the advantages of highway transportation. About 40% of the trucks in China run unloaded which pushes up the cost of free transportation and leads to a huge waste of energy. The city of Chengdu is an important transport hub in southwest China. In the north of the city, one smallish gas station can claim to be the most profitable gas station in China. It serves over 2,000 trucks every day. It takes over 300 tons of fuel oil to meet the daily demand. This way. Okay. Every day about 1,700 to 2,000 lorries come to our station. A truck driver usually spends 1,500 to 2,000 yuan on average for refueling. I'll be right there. At the busiest, our daily sales volume can reach 309.7 tons. The building on the other side of the wall is why trucks gather here. The freight market opens at 8:00 in the morning. The trading hall of Chengdu logistics port is packed with more than 1,000 truck drivers, speaking a multitude of different dialects. Drive over there. They'll take a picture of you. Then deliver the goods to Xiangyang. Can I load today? Can you load "Baymax"? People used to find it very hard to find the best deal. Today, the situation is already changing. More and more people just start with a search
on their mobile phones. New technology is revolutionizing the way the transport system works. This is a flow diagram of Transfar's intelligent logistics. (Pan Zhonghua, Deputy General Manager
Chengdu Highway Harbor, Transfar Group)
When a truck driver sets off from City A, he will know via an APP the location of his next batch of cargo. The driver can decide if he should take the order or not. The technology has swiftly shown its appeal to drivers. (Chengdu Highway Harbor, Transfar Group, the Entrance) When a truck enters the gate of the highway harbor, the vehicles' information will be sent to the back office system. The system automatically matches requirements and details of the trucks with the orders for delivery. Thus, goods are matched to suitably qualified trucks and their drivers, meaning that each day over 2,000 trucks no longer run empty back out of the logistics center. (Chengdu Highway Harbor, Transfar Group, the Exit)
Today, more and more digital highway ports are being built across China. The highway network's efficiency is being continuously optimized through the use of big data technology. In the future, every delivery will be more efficient with decreasing energy consumption per unit delivered. However, while highway transportation has great advantages, it also has some inherent disadvantages. Ziyang is an inland city in western China with a modest population of about 3 million. One of its main claims to fame is that it produces diesel locomotives for 24 countries around the world. For a city so far from the sea, it is a significant challenge to be able to deliver its locomotives to customers who may well be on the opposite side of the globe. 200 kilometers away in Yibin City, the Jinsha River and Minjiang River converge into the Yangtze River. As the longest river in China, the Yangtze has been a key communications' corridor for thousands of years. The great river leads all the way deep from inland China to the Pacific Ocean. That the cost of water transportation is 1/15 of that of highway transportation is an advantage and for extremely heavy goods. Water transport is irreplaceable. A first batch of nine locomotives made for Argentina has been assembled. They will travel down river to the port of Shanghai, 2,800 kilometers away. Then in a couple of weeks' time, they will be transferred to a sea-going freighter
and taken across the Pacific. It is hoped that these first 9 locomotives will lead to the opening up of new markets in the Americas. Highway transportation of these locomotives is very expensive and poses many problems with height and weight limits. With water transportation, these problems dissolve away. The locomotives from Ziyang arrive at the port. Workers hurry to hoist them onto the freighter. After a busy night, all nine locomotives have been safely stowed. The advantages of water transportation for large cargoes are very obvious, if not subject to the limitations of geography. The arid west of China has an abundance of coal. In 2016, China's coal production reached 3.36 billion tons, which accounts for more than half of the national energy supply. But most of this energy is needed in the east thousands of kilometers from where it is mined. To get it, there is the most intricate of Chinese puzzles. The 594-kilometer Shuohuang Railway is one of the busiest in China. Every day, 226 trains run along it in pairs. It is like a man-made canal, a main artery for China's energy transport. Shenchi in Shanxi Province is the starting point of this artery of coal. Stocks from western China gather here before being transported to east along this iron canal. 216 wagons are marshaled into a three-kilometer-long train. The 20,000-ton dead weight load requires two 9,600kw electric locomotives to get it moving. Then comes the really tricky bit. The railway east of Shenchi drops in elevation of more than 1,500 meters. The heavily loaded wagons travel downhill through tunnels and bends. The huge momentum they acquire poses a major threat to the safety of train. If the 216 wagons failed to break correctly and in sequence on a bend in the track, the consequences will be catastrophic. The secret to solving the problem lies here. Every day Qiu Zhen, director of technology, checks the 4G transmitter stations along the Shuohuang Railway. It's a world-first in the application of this technology to heavy haul trains. The two locomotives are 1.5 kilometers apart from each other, but they have to be precisely controlled to ensure their synchronization. 1/10 of a second lag could cause a meteor accident. In order to ensure full 4G coverage, there are 260 transmitters along the length of the light, sending a continuous stream of data, twenty-four seven. This advanced signaling technology is the key to ensuring the safe operation of these super long coal trains. It allows synchronized control over the two electric locomotives, set 1.5 kilometers apart. All in a day's work, a great performance to ensure there is no drama. (Dynamic Face Recognition System) Face recognition technology is one of China's leading edge developments. Based on image recognition and big data, it can quickly lock on to target persons being searched for. Engineers in the monitoring hall of the Guiyang Public Security Bureau are commissioning a new face recognition and monitoring system. 800 kilometers away, Cao Tao boards a train from Guangzhou to Guiyang. He needs to get to Guiyang this afternoon to direct a crucial part of the commissioning work. Cao Tao's company develops and provides facial recognition systems. This year, it decided to move its headquarters to Guiyang due to the rapid development of communications in Guizhou province. Guizhou is the only province in China that is entirely mountainous. While this makes for a spectacular environment, the province has been equally notorious for its poor communications, which have seriously impeded economic development. Guangzhou is the capital of China's powerhouse manufacturing province Guangdong. In the past it would take 22 hours to get to Guiyang by train. Now, the journey time is just 4.5 hours, thanks to a new high speed line connecting the two cities. (BLOCK DATA Exhibition Center
Public Security Bureau of Guiyang) First, the basic image information you have collected... Cao Tao makes it for his appointment in Guiyang. If we don't run the technical points, we can use the Skynet system. Every city in China now presses for its own connection to the national high speed rail network. Besides the convenience, the economic and development opportunities this brings makes a compelling argument. As of 2017, China has 22,000 kilometers of high speed rail lines in full operation, 60% of world total. It has cut travel times between the great conurbations from days to hours and given rise to a flourishing economic circle around each. The Three Gorges command center, Haixing 98. Five days down river from Yibin and the Argentina bound locals have arrived at the Three Gorges Dam Beginning in 1994, a huge investment and 12 years of work saw the building of the world's largest damp completed. Besides being designed to control flooding downstream and to aid consistent navigation, the hydroelectric plant now generates nearly 100 kilowatts hours of electricity, supplying nine provinces and two cities. The dam has raised the water level in the upper Yangtze River by 113 meters, which has submerged many dangerous shoals and shallows, allowing larger vessels to make passage there. 618, don't rush down. Stay with the anchorage for now. Wait until notice. Then I'll call the maritime affairs department. Yes, back to the anchorage. All right. The traffic on the river at the dam is now ten times what was planned for. The world's third-longest river is now the world's busiest inland waterway. The huge upgrade in capacity poses a major challenge. It's no easy job for Guo Yan to coordinate so many ships through the dam. She must rely on the set of five huge ship blocks that she manages. This is the world's largest inland ship lock, 1,607 meters long, divided into five chambers. With the capacity to take a maximum size vessel of 10,000 tons, up to twelve 3,010 cargo ships can transit the dam in each direction at the same time. With the huge fall of 113 meters, transit time is four to five hours and longer when there is a backlog of vessels. The waiting time can be problematic for pleasure boats and the emergency vessels that need to go through the damn quickly. To deal with this, the Chinese engineers have built the world's largest ship lift. It can handle vessels of up to 3,000 tons and take them through 113-meter fall in ten minutes. To achieve this speed, the Chinese engineers decided to use a climbing of gear rack system. Aided by gravity, the huge rack rolls up and down, lifting and dropping cargo in the 200-meter-long super elevator. (The use of the gravity counterweights) greatly reduces energy consumption. The ship left, along with the two sets of locks, one for upstream, one for down, have greatly increased the transport capacity on the river. The Yangtze River tightly connects the 11 provinces it passes through and forms a key economic corridor across the country. The Argentina bound locomotives pass through the three gorges. They'll continue on down river for another 10 days before reaching the Yangtze delta where they can be loaded onto an ocean going freighter for their final destination. For those that don't want to spend days on the water, air is the answer. Beijing Capital International Airport is the second-busiest airport around the world. (China Southern Airlines) In 2016, it saw throughput of close to 95 million passengers. Flight delays have become endemic with around 400 flights each day having to be postponed. The solution is even greater capacity. Look out above. Pay attention. In the south of Beijing, thousands of construction workers are tackling the flight delay problem. They are building a whole new super airport to serve the city. The huge steel starfish-like structure means that passengers will never have to go more than 600 meters to reach their boarding gate. The large central hall without columns is designed to maximize the public space. The innovated design brings its own challenges for the builders. Liu Yunfei climbs 20 stories to the roof every day. He is totally familiar with this huge structure. It's supposed to be joined securely to the steel beam above. Put the horizontal safety net back in place before you start. (Liu Yunfei, Deputy Chief Engineer
General Contracting Department of New Airport Terminal)
The coverage of the whole steel structure is 180,000 ㎡. We only designed eight C-shaped columns for such a space. Six of them are distributed on a 180m-diameter concentric circle. The enclosed area is even bigger than the National Stadium. However, the purpose of the building is not to outdo Beijing Olympic Stadium. To meet the demands of 70 million passengers per year, the design of the new airport must take into account many other factors. The roof composed of 12,300 spherical notes and over 60,000 bars is designed to have a natural curbing appearance. Each junction between the beams
and their connecting spheres is supported by a series of three-dimensional locking points. As the steel roof frames are completed, attention turns to more of the internal core support points. It will take eight workers to maneuver this 15-ton curve tube into place. It is one of the final piece in the 60,000 piece puzzle. On the other side of the terminal building, the construction of the four runways carries on a pace. The new airport is intended to handle 620,000 flights per year. This will put huge stress on the runway surfaces and what lies underneath. The engineers have developed a new system for compacting the subsoil. The novelty lies less in the method of compacting than in the tracking and calculation of the ground covered and that which remains. We can see that he's doing the 11th strike. If all the ramming work is finished, (Lu Xuesong, Project Engineer)
the pit's color will turn from blue to green. Around this pit, there are some white-colored pits. These represent where the work hasn't yet started. Also you can see the green-colored pits where the work has been completed. Beijing, the super city, is awaiting the completion of its new airport. It is expected to start handling traffic in 2019. The time pressure is on. China has the world's second-largest air transport market and it is one that is still growing at a rate of 10% per year. There are 3,000 civil aircraft flying in China and this number is expected to grow. To meet the demand, China is seeking to build some of its own passenger aircraft. The C919 is undergoing testing in Pudong, Shanghai. (Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China,Ltd. C919) Built to the latest international standards, it will be China's independently developed large passenger aircraft and will have an important role in the country's future aviation market. The first successful flight test was 3 months ago, but there are still years of strict testing in accordance with international airworthiness standards. Cai Jun has 11 years' experience in civil aviation, and is the C919 leading test pilot. (Cai Jun, Captain COMAC Flight Test Center)
Behind me is the engineering simulator of C919. It has two major roles at present. The first is to make development tests for the control system of C919. The second is to train the aircrew for the trial flights, as well as other pilots. Today, Cai Jun is working with the engineers on simulating emergency situation that might occur in flight. The computer program simulates an aerial close encounter while the aircraft is banking. Cai Jun must make a quick evasive maneuver and steer the aircraft to safety. There will be hundreds of tests done on this simulator. But for Cai Jun, the real work is done in the air. To complete the airborne tests, the first requirement is an aircraft spec for the job. Yang Chunxia from the Flight Test Center's Test Engineering Department is installing the complex test sensors in another C919. The bear cabin is totally given over to the test equipment. (Yang Chunxia, Test Engineering Department
COMAC Flight Test Center)
To meet the requirements of the fuselage, we made it with meticulous care. It's specially designed, like a rivet, fitted at this position. Here at the tail, now the rear heat shield is already in place. We have made many modifications at the tail. Because the temperature at here can reach up to 450℃, so when we design the cables, the crafts, the installation of sensors, and the tolerance of the sensors, we have to consider the worst case scenario and make the appropriate modifications. Thousands of sensors have been designed and carefully installed on the plane. They will give the engineers immediate data throughout the flight. To complete all the airworthiness tests, they need to modify at least six C919 like this. And all the aircraft will make nearly 3,000 test flights. (Study hard. Keep working. Make contribution.) The fuel consumption of large passenger aircraft manufactured by China is expected to reduce by 15%. Given its advantages, China has received orders for over 700 C919s. The C919 can be expected to provide a strong alternative for the future global aviation market. After a two-week voyage, the freighter carrying the Argentina bound locomotives has reached Shanghai. One of the many ports on China's east coast, the Shanghai Port, by 2016, is one of the world's ten largest port in China, Among them, with a throughput of 37 million containers, Shanghai Port is the biggest. Northwest of the existing port, a new wharf is being run through its operational paces. In a month's time, the wharf will see its first ship. It will then become the largest fully automated wharf as recorded anywhere in the world. Wang Yan and his team have been preparing for four years for this important moment. Before that, they still have two important tests to carry out. (Wang Yan, Project Manager
Yangshan Port Phase IV)
We call the automatic wharf a "ghost wharf", because there won't be any operators in there. In a traditional wharf, there are drivers on the bridge cranes, drivers on the rail cranes, and drivers on the ground. But the ghost wharf will be unmanned to reduce labor costs by at least 70%. The efficiency of the whole operation should increase by about 30%. As the commissioning date is approaching, Wang Yan's team must make another round of tests to make sure the ghost wharf is ready for action. Everything is controlled by computers. They will automatically operate and work with each other to move the containers. 130 automatic guided vehicles or AGVs, for short, will move the containers around the wharf. They have to avoid not just collisions, but even the slightest scratch. To test the reliability of the control system, the engineers have arranged a special test for the AGVs. They are programmed to drive in straight lines and round bends within very narrow tolerances. The AGVs must control their direction in accordance with the driving conditions to turn smoothly. The test result is satisfactory. Another system, though not exposed, is also crucial to the wharf. The 130 AGVs are electric powered to minimize emissions and noise pollution. But to ensure the round-the-clock operation of these vehicles that weigh many tons, the reliability of their power supply is essential. Good. The AGV has come in. Pay attention to that. Disconnect the battery circuit. Prepare for the automatic battery replacement. It's all full automatic. The staff in the battery replacement station are carefully observing the process of automatic battery replacement on an AGV. This is the only AGV automatic battery replacement station in Asia. It takes just six minutes to replace the battery. By the end of the year, Yangshan Port's automated wharf will usher in the world super freighters. And Shanghai Port's container throughput will touch 10% of the entire world total. Technological upgrades have led to an overall improvement in China's port operations. Meanwhile, this technological change is also impacting the whole country's transportation system. Glass curtain walls are being installed in Beijing new airport. The main building is about to be completed. Forty meters below the height of the new roof, the construction of another super traffic system has also entered a critical stage. You go to the B2-1 to set up the instrument. Lin, go to B2-2 for back sight. Get that mirror's height at 1.5m. The engineers are carrying out surveying work before laying the tracks for a railway system composed of 5 lines and 16 platforms. It is equivalent to the central station of a large city. It will also house the world's first high-speed railway station beneath an airport terminal. It allows passengers to transfer freely, quickly, and conveniently among multiple transport systems. But there is a problem in this ingenious plan. How much time do you need? More than 20 minutes. Finish at 3:45. Okay. (Beijing Urban Construction) The orange section is the shock-insulation support specially designed for this terminal. The terminal has a layer of shock isolation below the ground. There are altogether 1,152 shock-insulators. Underneath the terminal buildings, we have five tracks. (Liu Yunfei, Deputy Manager
General Contracting Department of New Airport Terminal)
The westernmost one is high-speed rail, where the speed can be up to 300km per hour if the train isn't stopping. This can make for high-frequency vibrations which could have an impact on the structure above. The problem is to be solved by shock-insulation technology. It is composed of a layer of natural rubber and a layer of steel. Rubber provides ductility. Steel plate ensures the bearing capacity. In this way, it is not only able to bear the weight, but also relatively flexible. The amount of deformation in our design can reach 660mm. 1,152 shock insulators will quietly support the huge terminal building. Multiple means of transportation are neatly integrated to give play to their respective advantages. From point-to-point road traffic to water transportation for large cargoes, from high speed rail to the aviation of the future, new technology is allowing each means of transport to be cleaner, more efficient, and handle ever greater demands for their use. China is truly being transported into a whole new era.
