A view of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link leading to Shenzhen from the Zhongshan side.
Zeng Wei (center) explaining the construction of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge.
All the above photos are provided by China Communications Construction Company (CCCC).
Gazing toward the Pearl River Estuary, the urban clusters on both shores—once separated by the Lingdingyang—are now closely connected by a super project: the world's first cross-sea cluster project integrating "bridge, island, tunnel, and underwater interchange"—this is the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link.
Seven years of forging turned a natural chasm into a thoroughfare. Since its opening, the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link has maintained high traffic volumes, with total traffic exceeding 10 million vehicle trips, becoming an important bond for the integrated development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. How was this super project created, and what Chinese wisdom does it embody?
Innovative solutions—
Creating Chinese speed with "construction started and island formed in the same year"
Driving through the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link, at the bridge-tunnel transition, buildings stand tall and greenery is dense. The vast artificial island at sea has now become a new landmark for visitors on the Lingdingyang.
Viewed from above, the island resembles a giant kunpeng: 625 meters long, 456 meters at its widest point, with an area of about 137,000 square meters—equivalent to 19 standard football fields. Such a massive island-building project set a miracle of "construction started and island formed in the same year."
How was this Chinese speed achieved?
Innovative solutions were the first step. Because the construction waters of the west artificial island had deep water and thick mud, traditional cofferdam reclamation techniques could not meet the schedule requirements. Drawing fully on the experience of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the engineering team creatively proposed a large deep-inserted steel cylinder island enclosure solution, vibrating and sinking 57 steel cylinders into the sea to form a water-stop retaining structure, thereby rapidly forming the island.
The "blueprint" was drawn, but implementation was full of challenges. "We had to drive 57 steel cylinders—each 28 meters in diameter, 40 meters tall, and weighing over 600 tons—steadily into the seabed more than 20 meters deep using a self-developed 12-hammer linkage hammer group," said Liu Haobin, deputy general manager of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link Project Department of CCCC First Harbor Engineering. After surveying the seabed topography, they found that the soft soil layer under the Pearl River Estuary was dozens of meters thick and interspersed with hard interlayers, making vibration-sinking precision extremely difficult to control.
If the foundation is not solid, the earth will shake. To address these conditions, the team first developed a steel cylinder foundation pretreatment technology: a specialized vessel like a "mixer" penetrated deep into the sand layer, injected slurry, and softened it, making the placement of steel cylinders like inserting them into smooth "tofu." They also developed a new measurement and positioning system, giving the steel cylinder vibration-sinking "eyes" and achieving a 100% correct positioning rate.
On May 1, 2017, the first steel cylinder of the west artificial island was successfully vibrated and sunk; on September 18 of the same year, the last steel cylinder was completed. After the new technology was "replicated" 57 times, in just over four months, a huge artificial island "emerged" from the Lingdingyang—the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link had placed its "first piece" on the entire route.
Engineering innovation—
Turning "question marks" into "exclamation marks"
Leaving the west artificial island and heading east through the wide portal, you "dive" with the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Tunnel into the seabed dozens of meters deep, where eight lanes in both directions run straight and flat, bright as day. It is hard to imagine that this is a massive project formed by dozens of steel-shell concrete immersed tubes, each weighing about 80,000 tons, joined end to end.
How to build the huge immersed tubes was an urgent problem to solve. In June 2019, on Guishan Island in Zhuhai, after 10 months of comprehensive upgrading and renovation, the immersed tube prefabrication factory of CCCC Fourth Harbor Engineering—which had previously undertaken the tunnel immersed tube construction for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge—was reopened. In the smart factory, intelligent casting systems and steel-shell tube segment movement systems worked in coordination, not only completing the rapid prefabrication and transport of 23 immersed tube segments but also yielding 11 invention patents.
Floating the completed immersed tubes into position was the top priority of the entire project. "Compared with the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link's immersed tube tunnel has a new structure, wider dimensions, and a longer transport distance; existing equipment could not meet the construction requirements, so we had to build a more powerful specialized vessel for immersed tube construction," said Ning Jinjin, executive deputy chief engineer of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link Project Department of CCCC First Harbor Engineering.
Facing the challenge of ultra-long 50-kilometer floating transport, half a year of comparative analysis and multiple "brainstorming" sessions brought the idea of a self-powered installation vessel to the surface. After three years of scheme refinement, construction, and commissioning, in June 2019 the world's first integrated floating transport and installation vessel, the "Yihang Jin'an 1," left the dock. This is a super-large vessel with a deadweight of 20,000 tons; it not only has self-propulsion capability and more than triples floating transport efficiency, but is also equipped with an immersed tube placement attitude control system that can achieve precise placement of immersed tubes at a depth of 50 meters underwater.
"When we first saw this giant, we were all nervous: would it really work?" Ning Jinjin recalls vividly.
You only know if a horse is any good by letting it run. So a year of drills began. On the vast open sea, they withstood Level 10 gales, tested waves over two meters high, and endured five no-load drills in 10 months; the "question marks" in the builders' minds were finally slowly "straightened out."
After passing the "monthly tests" and "mock exams," the real "final exam" finally arrived in June 2020—placing the first immersed tube at its predetermined position deep in the sea.
On the Lingdingyang, an 80,000-ton immersed tube segment was towed out of the dock at Niutou Island and merged with the 20,000-ton integrated vessel. After seven channel transitions and overcoming challenges such as grounding in shallow-water channels and high back-silting intensity, it finally reached the installation point.
"To improve the docking precision of the tube segment at 40 meters underwater, we introduced the BeiDou system into immersed tube docking for the first time, achieving unmanned underwater immersed tube installation," said Ning Jinjin. During the construction of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, floating transport of tunnel immersed tubes over 12 kilometers took 12 hours; for the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link, thanks to the "Yihang Jin'an 1," a floating transport distance of 50 kilometers took only about 10 hours.
From the "debut" of the first immersed tube to the successful installation of the last immersed tube in June 2023, over three years Ning Jinjin led the team in continuously optimizing operating methods and construction procedures, narrowing docking precision from centimeters to millimeters and steadily placing each immersed tube at its designated position on the seabed. "This is the 100 points we dreamed of; at this point all the 'question marks' have become big 'exclamation marks'!"
Equipment innovation—
"Drawing" the skyline over the Lingdingyang
Standing on the west artificial island and looking west, the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge has become a beautiful "skyline" over the Lingdingyang.
"Drawing" this line was not easy. "The Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge includes two main towers 270 meters high; to ensure navigability, the navigable clearance is 76.5 meters, the highest in the world," said Zeng Wei, executive deputy chief engineer of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link Project of CCCC Second Harbor Engineering. Building the main towers safely and efficiently in a complex marine environment with frequent typhoons is no small challenge.
After multiple site surveys and discussions, researchers designed a construction scheme for an integrated intelligent tower-building machine in October 2018.
"We developed a movable device integrating rebar component processing and installation, concrete distribution, curing, and monitoring—essentially building a 'vertical mobile factory' high in the air," Zeng Wei explained.
From research and development to manufacturing and assembly, it took nearly a year and a half for China's first integrated intelligent tower-building machine to be completed and put into use. "With this tower-building 'magic tool,' the construction speed of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge tower columns increased from 0.6 meters per day to 1.2 meters per day, and the number of high-altitude operators required dropped from 15 to 6," said Zeng Wei. More importantly, its intelligent curing system can bring concrete to factory-standard curing conditions, achieving a surface free of shrinkage cracks.
They adopted ultra-long strand unmanned following installation technology to ensure main cable erection was "steady, accurate, and fast"; developed a flexible production line for rebar mesh to increase tower column construction speed... New technologies and new processes have helped the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge stand firmly on the vast sea.
Now, several months after the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link opened to traffic, the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge lies like a long rainbow, holding up the highest point over the Lingdingyang. "We jointly created a super project, and the super project has also given us the highlight moments of our lives." In 17 years of bridge-building career, this is the eighth major bridge Zeng Wei has participated in building. "There is no end to striving; for me, the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge is not an end, but a new beginning!"
"Looking back on the innovation journey of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link, every step was proven amid doubt and advanced through exploration," Ning Jinjin said with emotion. The innovative team cultivated by the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link, the advanced equipment developed, and the construction experience accumulated will help China's construction industry stride toward high-quality development.
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