China has once again proven that its engineering prowess literally knows no bounds. In the heart of Northwest China, the Tianshan Shengli road tunnel has been officially opened - a megastructure that instantly takes first place in the world as the longest high-speed facility of its type. With its impressive 22.13 kilometers, this underground giant cuts through the Tianshan mountain range, turning an exhausting, hours-long climb along dangerous serpentines into a comfortable 20-minute journey.
This infrastructural triumph is the “backbone” of the new G0711 highway connecting Urumqi and Yuli. Its importance for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is difficult to describe in numbers alone. For decades, the mountains were a natural and almost insurmountable barrier separating the north from the south. Today, this “narrow place” is history. The journey between the administrative center of Urumqi and the city of Korla now takes just three hours, instead of the previous seven - a change that is literally rewriting the economic map of the region.
The cost of this feat is as impressive as the tunnel itself - an investment of nearly $6.6 billion and five years of round-the-clock work in extreme conditions. Engineers literally fought nature, laying the route 1.1 kilometers below the peaks. The project crosses as many as 16 geological faults in an area with high seismic activity, where temperatures often drop to freezing levels and the climate is merciless.
Tianshan Shengli is not just asphalt and concrete underground; It is a strategic corridor that opens up new horizons for logistics, tourism and business in one of the harshest regions on the planet. For the Chinese, it is further proof that when nature puts up a barrier, they simply find a way to get through it.