A trip across the Huajiang canyon in Guizhou used to take about two hours. Since Sunday morning, 28 September 2025, it takes roughly two minutes.
The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge opened to traffic that day in southwest China, after three years of construction. Its deck sits 625 meters above the Beipan River, which Xinhua says is nearly nine times the height of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. That makes it the tallest bridge in the world.
The structure is 2,890 meters long with a main span of 1,420 meters. Guizhou authorities say it is the longest-span steel truss girder suspension bridge in mountainous terrain. The opening brought the expressway linking Liuzhi special district and Anlong county into full operation.
The record it took
The previous holder is another Guizhou bridge over the Beipan River, about 100 km away. It opened in 2016, with a clearance of 565.4 meters from deck to river.
Zhang Yin, head of the provincial transportation department, said the new bridge “will greatly enhance regional connectivity” and shows China’s innovation. It earned 21 authorized patents for wind-resistance design and high-altitude construction, he said, and several of its technologies have been written into national bridge construction standards.
Building across the canyon, nicknamed “the Earth’s crack,” took satellite navigation, drones, smart monitoring systems and ultra-high-strength materials. The crew reached millimeter-level precision at height.
A province of bridges
Guizhou is one of China’s least developed provinces, and its terrain is rugged. It has built more than 30,000 bridges, three of them among the world’s tallest, and holds nearly half of the world’s 100 tallest. The combined length of its existing and planned bridges tops 5,400 km, close to the distance from the north of China to its south.
Sources
- World's tallest bridge opens to traffic in southwest China's Guizhou
- World's tallest bridge opens to traffic in Guizhou
