INTRODUCTION

On 1 May 2008, the whole line of the 36-kilometre cross-sea bridge, spanning Hangzhou Bay, was opened to traffic. As the world's longest cross-sea bridge to date, it has cut the land-route distance between Ningbo and Shanghai by more than 120 kilometre. It is estimated to produce over RMB2.2 billion worth of social benefit by reduced transportation cost, etc.

On 11 April, the world's largest long-span cable-stayed bridge, Sutong Yangtze River Highway Bridge officially passed the acceptance testing, and will be put to use soon. This 32.4-kilometre Sutong Bridge, connecting the cities of Nantong and Suzhou, would lead Nantong into Shanghai's “one- hour economic circle”. Moreover, with the rapid development of the projects of the seabed tunnel between Changxing Island and Chongming Island of Shanghai, and the Chongqi Great Bridge between Chongming Island and the city of Qidong in Jiangsu Province, the far end of Jiangsu Province where it stretches into the Yellow Sea will also have an unprecedented close relation with Shanghai.

Meanwhile, the existing transportation lines are also being upgraded. With a speed of 200 kilometre per/hour, the Nanjing-Shanghai Intercity Express Railway, which is to be finished in three years, will allow people to travel from Nanjing to Shanghai in only nintety minutes. It is vividly called “a railway taxi”.

The transportation blueprint of the Yangtze River Delta 1 for the next two years is as follows: by 2010, a Shanghai-centred economic circle with a 300-kilometre radius consisting of sixteen cities from the Yangtze River delta, including cities like Suzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Kunshan, Songjiang, etc., will be established. All connected by express highway, these sixteen cities will form a “three-hour city circle”, which would be a “Great Shanghai” with an area thirty-four times and population eight times of the current Shanghai. The enthusiasm to build large infrastructure projects reveals a shared wish of all the cities in the delta, which is to decrease the distance between Shanghai and themselves. Clearly they are competing vigorously with each other for this.