Opened in December 2005, the Donghai Bridge — connecting mainland Shanghai with a new deepwater container port on the islands of Yangshan in Hangzhou Bay 32.5km away — was not the world’s longest cross-water bridge. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in New Orleans, completed in the 1960s, was longer. But Donghai (meaning East China Sea) Bridge was a very concrete symbol of China’s ambitions to dominate world trade.
