As with rockets, some allowance of trial and error must be allowed, while under a dictatorship and no EPA etc. or Woke regs and people with a work (or else) ethic, and with funds due to commence enabled by pols seeking power and or imagining democracy itself was the answer and opening vast trade to China (with postal and tariff breaks), then China is leaving the US in the dust in bridge building. Thus headlines as.
Beijing is building roads & bridges. America should take notice ... American Trucking Associations https://www.trucking.org › news-insights › beijing-buildi... For years, Beijing has been making investment in transportation and trade infrastructure — within its borders and also beyond — a top priority....Thirty years ago, there were no highways in China. Today, its national highway network spans more 88,000 miles — more than any other country in the world. And they are not slowing down: since 2011, the Chinese have built 6,000 miles of new highway every year.
There are [2019] 178 million daily crossings on over 47,000 structurally deficient U.S. bridges.
America’s trucking industry knows what’s at stake. We move 10.77 billion tons of freight every year — a task made ever-more challenging by the atrocious condition of our country’s roadways and bridges — and that tonnage is projected to grow by 27% over the next decade - https://www.trucking.org/news-insights/beijing-building-roads-bridges-america-should-take-notice
The US Turns To China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSQAqMDi1yQ
May 23, 2023 This 15-mile, $6.7B bridge is a symbol of China’s ambitions, and its problems.. Even in a land known for gargantuan, record-breaking infrastructure, this project is turning heads. At 15 miles long (24 kilometers), eight lanes wide and featuring artificial islands and an undersea tunnel, China’s $6.7 billion Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge is nothing if not ambitious. To much fanfare in the country’s state media, the bridge’s builders recently claimed a new world record by paving in a single day more than 243,200 square feet (22,600 square meters) of asphalt, the equivalent of more than 50 basketball courts.
Yet strange as it may sound, this is not the world’s longest sea bridge. That honor belongs to its 34-mile long neighbor, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge – just 20 miles away. ...Like its sister bridge in Hong Kong, when the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge opens to traffic next year after eight years of construction,
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When Deng Xiaoping arrived at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington in January 1979, his country was just emerging from a long revolutionary deep freeze. No one knew much about this 5-foot-tall Chinese leader. He had suddenly reappeared on the scene after twice being cashiered by Mao, who famously described him as “a needle inside a ball of cotton.” But in 1979 he knew exactly what he wanted: better relations with the U.S. He and President Jimmy Carter appeared to be serious about resolving differences.
- https://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/china-strikes-back
On January 1, 1979, the US officially switched diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China (ROC), or Taiwan, to the PRC. In announcing that decision two weeks earlier, president Jimmy Carter said the historic change he was announcing “will be of great long‐term benefit to the peoples of both our country and China.” 
https://asiatimes.com/2019/05/does-us-regret-its-past-china-engagement/
President Bill Clinton talks with former President Jimmy Carter as former President Gerald Ford looks on, at a China trade event.
