In early September 2013, a grand opening ceremony was being held on the Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco, California, USA - The world's largest span single-tower self-anchored and earthquake-resistant suspension steel bridge, the eastern section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge with a history of more than 70 years The new bridge was opened to traffic on this day.
At the opening ceremony, watching this historic old bridge regain a new life, many locals who watched the bridge being built were very excited.
One of the old men (the son of a worker who participated in the construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge) said this:
"Thank God, this bridge has been the pride of my father in the past few decades. But it is a pity. Unfortunately, shortly after the bridge collapsed, my father became seriously ill and was about to die. Now that the bridge has finally regained a new lease of life with the help of China, I believe my father will be very happy in heaven! "
After saying that, the old man looked at the traffic rushing by on the bridge and waved excitedly, celebrating the new life of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
And in the old man's plain words, the word China is so eye-catching:
What is the relationship between China and this San Francisco -Oakland Bridge?
(San Francisco-Oakland Bridge)
1. The historic San Francisco-Oakland Bridge
In the middle of the 19th century, a carpenter named James Marshall accidentally discovered several pieces of gold in a river in California, USA.
(American Gold Rush)
Subsequently, the American "Gold Rush" spanning nearly half a century began. For a time, hundreds of thousands or even millions of young people from the United States and the world came to California with the dream of getting rich. .
A large number of immigrants caused the population of California to rise rapidly, and the economy began to take off.
However, as the population increases, the shortcomings of California's previously backward infrastructure have become apparent. The need for infrastructure construction such as roads and bridges has become a vision shared by the California government and people. The idea of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge also came about during this time.
However, for humans at that time, building a bridge across the entire Auckland Bay was a bit too far-fetched.
Its construction was as difficult as building a tall tower reaching the sky, and the financial, material and manpower expenditures were by no means what the California government or even the United States could afford at that time. Therefore, the plan was shelved until the 20th century. of the 1930s.
(San Francisco in the early 20th century)
In 1933, in order to save the United States from the Great Depression, then-President Roosevelt proposed a "big infrastructure" plan, investing 4%-31.5% of the annual GDP of the United States. to the infrastructure of the United States, which lasted eight years.
In the past eight years, the infrastructure construction in the United States has advanced by leaps and bounds. Many buildings that seem to be miracles now were built in the United States at that time.
For example, the office building of the US Department of Defense - the Pentagon , the most famous bridge in the world - the Golden Gate Bridge in the United States, etc.
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was also built during this period, and was opened to traffic half a year earlier than the Golden Gate Bridge . Not long after the bridge was completed, was called "a miracle in the history of world bridge construction" by the American media.
(American landmark Golden Gate Bridge)
2. The ill-fated bridge
As the name suggests, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is A bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland. However, the Oakland Bay Bridge is not a bridge that directly connects two places. is composed of two bridges, with Yerba Buena Island in the middle of the bay as the node.
After it was opened to traffic, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge showed extremely high quality. During the 54 years from 1936 to 1989, there were few problems.
Until October 1989, San Francisco encountered a 6.9-magnitude earthquake.
(San Francisco Earthquake)
Due to insufficient seismic resistance design of the bridge in the early design process, eventually led to the collapse of the eastern section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
Subsequently, the local government spent huge sums of money to reinforce the entire section of the bridge and upgrade its seismic resistance. and replaced a large number of new materials to extend the service life of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
However, what the local government did not expect was that the bridge's condition still posed safety risks despite reinforcements, especially in the eastern section of the bridge that was seriously damaged in the earthquake. In the more than ten years after the earthquake, the damage has been very serious .
In 1999, after seeing the condition of the bridge, the local government decided not to repair the bridge and rebuild a new eastern section of the bridge.
At this time, the United States is no different than it was a few decades ago. An important matter like rebuilding a bridge requires several generations of governments to make a formal decision. By the time the United States officially decided to rebuild the bridge, it was already seven years later in 2006.
At this time, 17 years have passed since the San Francisco earthquake..
(San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge)
3. Who will repair the bridge?
With the lessons learned from the 1989 earthquake, at the bidding meeting for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the California government put forward two requirements:
First, the earthquake resistance must reach level 8, and second, the service life must be more than 100 years. As soon as these two requirements of came out, many major bridge manufacturers in the United States and around the world exclaimed that these two requirements are too difficult, especially in terms of earthquake resistance.
In the world at that time, only a handful of countries were able to build bridges with level 8 earthquake resistance, let alone the stringent requirement of a service life of one hundred years.. When the
project was established, the first country that the United States thought of was its "little brother" in Asia, Japan.
(The prosperous Tokyo urban agglomeration in Japan)
For a long time, Japan, as a world-famous construction and infrastructure power, has undertaken many world-class projects. Even the word infrastructure madness was originally used to describe Japan. The word .
Therefore, after being rejected by domestic companies, the U.S. government immediately approached Japan and wanted Japan to help California build the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
After learning about the California government's requirements, the Japanese directly rejected the U.S. government's invitation and bluntly told the United States that the difficulty of this project was too high and they could not do .
After being rejected by Japan, the US government was embarrassed. So I set my sights on South Korea, Europe and other countries at that time, and the answer to was without exception: cannot be done.
(Broken San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge)
After hitting the wall one after another, the California government is deeply thinking about whether to lower the requirements of the project, such as reducing the service life to 50 years and reducing the earthquake resistance level to 7 etc.
After all, according to the speculation of local architects and engineers, the original San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge will not last long. If the new bridge cannot be built in time, then for California, the consequences will be The economic damage to is huge.
And when the U.S. government was at a loss, they were pleasantly surprised to find that among the many countries bidding, companies from one country not only did not reject the United States, but also demonstrated their ability to build the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
And this country is China, and this company is China Zhenhua Heavy Industries, a subsidiary of China Communications Group.
(Zhenhua Heavy Industries)
3. Zhenhua Heavy Industries
In 1992, under the leadership of Guan Tongxian, a company with only a dozen employees named " Zhenhua Port Machinery " was born in Shanghai.
At that time, Shanghai had become a world-class port city under the spring breeze of reform and opening up . However, what was very sad was that all the port machinery in China at that time, that is, container cranes, were all imported from foreign countries. There is almost no in China.
Under such circumstances, Zhenhua Port Machinery has been deeply involved in the field of domestic port machinery, and has quickly opened up domestic and foreign sales with products of high quality, high innovation and high cost performance. In more than ten years, it has become one of the world's leading companies in China and even the world. The most advanced port machinery brand .
(Zhenhua Port Machinery)
Now, Zhenhua Heavy Industry’s product market share has reached as high as 80%, or even 90%. can be said to have monopolized the entire world’s port machinery market and has become a new business card for Chinese companies in foreign countries. .
After reading this, you may be curious, what does ZPMC, a port machinery company, have to do with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge?
In fact, this is not the case. After 2000, Zhenhua Port Machinery made great achievements in the port machinery market and has been expanding into other fields. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project is when Zhenhua expanded outward. an attempt.
In 2006, when the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge construction project in the United States launched , ZPMC showed great enthusiasm. The company decisively sent a team to the United States to participate in investment promotion and made full preparations.
After learning about the U.S. request, ZPMC was not discouraged. The company quickly carried out an analysis of the possibility of implementing the U.S. request and obtained accurate and positive results.
At the same time, the U.S. request was rejected by Japan, South Korea and other countries. The bidding delegation of Zhenhua Heavy Industry immediately expressed to the U.S. that it could achieve .
However, although ZPMC has firm confidence, the United States is somewhat unconvinced.
On the one hand, China's performance in the international infrastructure market at that time was far from as dazzling as it is today.
It is hard for the U.S. and California governments to believe that even world-famous infrastructure exporters such as Japan and South Korea cannot guarantee this. Where does the confidence of China and Zhenhua Heavy Industry come from?
On the other hand, Americans are actually no stranger to Zhenhua Heavy Industries. Because many ports in the United States have always used port machinery produced by Zhenhua China, and even the port machinery produced by the United States cannot compete with Zhenhua's product in the US market.
(Obama Zhenhua Heavy Industry Incident)
For example, in 2013, Obama , then the US government, once gave a speech at the Port of Miami in the United States "calling on Americans to use American products."
As a result, the American flag used to cover the crane in the port behind him was accidentally blown down by the wind, revealing the four words "Zhenhua Heavy Industry" in large letters, which made Obama very embarrassed. It can be seen that ZPMC has a huge impact on the United States..
However, even though Americans are very impressed by Zhenhua Heavy Industry, Zhenhua Heavy Industry has not had any experience in building bridges before. This is something that worries the U.S. government very much. After all, this is a project involving tens of billions of dollars. For large projects, no matter which country it is placed in, it cannot be easily decided on .
In addition, when China Zhenhua Heavy Industry Group was preparing to undertake the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project, many Californians and Americans broke out in fierce protests, and said that the Chinese would only destroy this effort of the "American people" . This has also caused considerable concern for the US government.
But concerns were concerns. The US government at that time had no time to make a choice. For them, no matter whether Zhenhua Heavy Industry could do satisfactorily, they could only choose Zhenhua.
Finally, in mid-June 2006, with the support of the Chinese government, ZPMC successfully held a contract signing ceremony with the general contractor American Bridge Service-Fluor Joint Venture.
officially signed a contract with a total contract price of approximately US$250 million for the construction project of the bridge steel tower and the total 45,000-ton steel structure of the bridge during the reconstruction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
So, can ZPMC be able to meet the stringent requirements of the United States? The answer is yes.
China quality
During the construction process of the project, ZPMC, a company that had never built a bridge before, took an extremely focused attitude to overcome difficulties during the project and passed the test from the United States.
According to Dai Wenkai, Vice President of Zhenhua Heavy Industry, at the beginning of the project, the United States had extremely high requirements for Zhenhua's capabilities and standards. For this reason, they even sent a team of more than 150 supervision experts to come. Went inside the Zhenhua Heavy Industry factory and conducted strict inspections on the actions of every worker..
Even sometimes, when an ordinary welding worker of Zhenhua Heavy Industry is working, there will be more than ten welding experts from the United States observing from behind, trying to find every flaw in the worker's operation.
What was very disappointing to them was that the welding workers from China did not make any mistakes under such strong pressure. Almost all the workers showed extremely high standards in their work..
has perfectly made all the parts needed for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project. Its craftsmanship is so high that American experts are ashamed of , and they all praise China's craftsmanship. This also gives American contractors a reassurance .
Finally, five years later, in July 2011, after experiencing the hard work of countless workers of Zhenhua Heavy Industry around the clock, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project was completely completed at the Changxing Island base..
In this project, ZPMC not only completed the tasks in the contract excellently, but also exceeded the requirements of the United States.
(Zhenhua Changxing Island)
For example, in terms of accuracy, Americans require that the accuracy of tower processing in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project must reach 1/2500 of the world's top level, while Zhenhua directly uses the American The requirements have doubled to 1/5000, far exceeding the world's top level .
When the millions of parts produced by Zhenhua Heavy Industries were shipped to the United States, they all passed the extremely high standards of acceptance by the American quality inspection department, and they also gave the same high-level evaluation as the expert team of supervisors.
Moreover, when these parts were shipped to the United States, Schwarzenegger, the then governor of California , specially attended the shipping ceremony.
At this shipping ceremony, Schwarzenegger just held the hands of the Chinese workers and said with a smile
"I am a fan of Zhenhua Bridge Construction Workers."
(California Governor Schwarzenegger)
Summary As said, it was absolutely great news for China at that time, because it symbolized that , like , China's bridge construction had finally been recognized by developed countries in the world.
China's bridge manufacturing has completely entered the world's high-end market. A new bridge business card unique to China has been passed to the world with the success of this project !
After receiving the bridge steel towers and bridges produced by Zhenhua Heavy Industries, the reconstruction work of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge finally officially began.
On September 2, 2013, the newly built bridge was officially opened to traffic. Countless Californians were ecstatic to see the birth of the new bridge. This is the scene at the beginning of the article.
(San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge)
At the same time, China Zhenhua Heavy Industry has just undertaken the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project. Domestic opposition voices in the United States disappeared with the completion of the bridge, and Chinese companies Projects and products have been unanimously recognized by the American people..
Chinese bridges go global
Since the successful conclusion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project, China's infrastructure projects, especially bridge projects, have begun the process of going global. The old impressions of China's infrastructure in various countries around the world have also begun a 180-degree change. Reverse .
In early March 2014, the opening ceremony of the Second Penang Bridge in Malaysia, built by China Communications Construction Company, was held. The bridge was 22.5 kilometers long and was the longest cross-sea bridge in Southeast Asia at the time.
(Second Bridge in Penang, Malaysia)
When the project was first planned, the Malaysian government, like the United States, first sought cooperation intentions from major infrastructure countries such as Japan and South Korea, but in the end the prices of Japan and South Korea failed to convince the Malaysian government Accept .
After the success of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project, the Malaysian government changed its previous attitude and actively sought cooperation with China. This finally led to the largest cooperation project between China and Malaysia and one of the largest bridge projects in Southeast Asia. The birth of .
and the cooperation project with Malaysia is just one of the achievements of China Bridge to go global.
Looking back at the development history of bridges in China, from the Zhaozhou Bridge that has stood for thousands of years in the Sui Dynasty to the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, the largest bridge in China after the founding of the People's Republic of China, to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Penang Bridge in Malaysia. Second Bridge, and then to the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge that shocked the world.
(Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge)
Every bridge is a reflection of the craftsmanship and bridge spirit engraved in the bones of the Chinese people.
Today, China's bridge construction has reached the forefront of the world. In the past ten years, nearly half of the world's bridge construction market has been monopolized by China.
Among the rankings of the world's tallest bridges, 8 of the top ten are located in China, and among the world's longest bridges, 9 of the top ten are located in China.
It can be said that in the field of bridge construction, the Chinese people are far ahead of all people in the world.
The Chinese people are on this side of the bridge, and the people of the world are on the other side of the bridge .
Reference:
AkzoNobel helps Zhenhua build the new San Francisco Bay Bridge. Modern coatings and coatings. February 2010, Volume 13, Issue 2
Chen Yuanpeng Chinese bridges: The "business card" that amazes the world "Well-off"
China Broadcasting Network San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, United States, China-made steel structure. Issue 7, 2011
Chinese steel structure supports American Bridge. Steel Structure. 2007 Issue 1 Volume 22 Total Issue 99
Ding Xiaodong Sun Weidong
United States San Francisco-Oakland New Bay Bridge Steel Structure Manufacturing Technology. Steel Structure. 2008 Issue 11 Volume 23 Total Issue 113
