World's highest bridge opens to traffic in China

BEIJING

The world's highest bridge opened to traffic in China on Sunday, state media said, capping an engineering feat three years in the making and snatching the record from another bridge in the same province.

The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge towers 625 meters above a river and vast gorge in the country's rugged southern province of Guizhou, also home to the 565-meter Beipanjiang Bridge that is now the world's second highest.

Crowds of onlookers including project engineers and local officials gathered on the bridge for a ceremony to mark the occasion, several expressing their pride and excitement in live interviews to state media.

China has invested heavily in major infrastructure projects in recent decades, a period of rapid economic growth and urbanisation in the country.

The hilly province of Guizhou in particular is crisscrossed by thousands of bridges, which now include the world's two highest.

State news agency Xinhua said last week that nearly half of the world's 100 highest bridges are located in the province.

The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge took more than three years to complete, Xinhua reported. Its 1,420-meter main span makes it the "world's largest-span bridge built in a mountainous area," it added.

Apart from the world's highest bridge, the tallest, measured in terms of the height of its own structure, rather than the distance to the ground, remains France's Millau viaduct at 343 metres.