Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB)

The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is an ongoing construction project that will connect Hong Kong, Macao and Zhuhai. The proposed 55 km is due for completion in 2018. Zhuhai will be the first city with land links to Hong Kong and Macao then.

The project stretches for 55 kilometers, 20 times the length of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, and it will shorten the four-hour drive from Hong Kong to Zhuhai to half an hour. Construction started in 2009. It is designed to withstand a magnitude 8 earthquake, a super typhoon with wind speeds of 184 to 202 kilometers per hour or a strike by a cargo vessel weighing 300,000 metric tons.

The tunnel and artificial island project is seen as the most difficult task and an area using the latest technology and design. The 6.7-kilometer tunnel is the country's first offshore immersed tube tunnel and the world's longest, deepest embedded project of such kind. In an immersed tube tunnel, parts are sunk at the construction site and water is pumped out after they are joined.

The island-tunnel-island structure was designed to allow easy movement of shipping at one of the world's busiest deep-water passages, the Lingding West Channel, the middle channel of the Pearl River estuary, according to Lin Ming, the project's general manager. As many as 4,000 ships a day navigate waters above the tunnel, serving ports around the estuary, officials said.