Undeterred by reports of soaring capital spending, Beijing is forging ahead with a national expressway grid that will eclipse America's famed interstate system, writes Tom Miller
'Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,' sang America's national poet Walt Whitman at the end of the 19th century. His ode came 20 years after the invention of modern asphalt in New York City heralded the rise of an economic superpower based on a superior road transport system.
China's asphalt obsession may have started 100 years later, but the central government regards an integrated expressway network as a cornerstone of its own development goals and, as such, is steaming ahead with its plans for the first expressway network to rival the US Interstate Highway System.
Expressway construction began in 1988, when the late premier Zhao Ziyang persuaded his Politburo colleagues that roads - then largely a transport option for a bourgeois elite - were essential to economic growth.
China's expressways already rank second in the world after the US. Last October, the Ministry of Communications published a plan to expand the expressway network to 85,000km - about 10,000km longer than the interstate network in the US.
Dubbed '7-9-18', the plan is to connect all towns and cities with a population of more than 200,000. The network will consist of seven key expressways radiating from Beijing, nine running from north to south, and 18 crossing from east to west. Trunk roads will account for 68,000km of the total, while five regional ring roads will add a further 17,000km.