My Take | China’s awe-inspiring roads, bridges and urban structures now face the test of extreme weather

China has been vulnerable to natural disasters throughout its history. In ancient times, the sheer size of the organised labour required to tame China’s unruly Yellow River was said to be a key reason why Chinese traditional political culture and social order came to value collectivism over individualism.

In modern times, China is still accustomed to reports of droughts and floods. After all, for a mountainous country the size of a continent, natural disasters are just “natural”. At the same time, as in many other parts of the world, China is facing more frequent extreme weather incidents. While climate change is a common challenge for all countries, China faces particular disadvantages in handling extreme weather given its infrastructure and population.

These frequent extreme weather incidents are coming after what was probably the biggest and longest construction boom in human history. In one widely cited figure, China used more concrete in the three years from 2011 to 2013 than the US did in the entire 20th century. While it is an extraordinary achievement to build numerous new roads, bridges and buildings in a short number of years, the quality of many of these projects has yet to be tested by the power of nature.

During a construction boom, many projects are completed in a rush and defects could surface under extreme weather, such as unusually heavy rainfall. Even if only a tiny number of these are “tofu projects” – a term coined by China’s former premier Zhu Rongji in 1998 after he inspected the poorly-built dykes along the Yangtze River – the human toll and financial cost could be dear. This summer, the collapse of a 18-metre section of a decade-old highway in north Guangdong killed 48 people, and in July, a 6-year-old road bridge collapsed in Shaanxi, killing 38 with 24 missing.