Yalu-Bridge1.jpg (Photo : www.wanderingchina.org)
A project involving the start of a new phase in the construction of the bridge connecting Ji'an, Jilin Province, in northeast China to Manp'o City in North Korea across the Yalu River is now open for bidding, according to an announcement in the Jilin provincial government's official website.
The bid announcement, according to the Global Times, says that the highway bridge will be about 8.77 kilometers long and meet China's highest highway quality standards, allowing for average travel speeds of 60 kilometers per hour. The project passed the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) review and will be implemented with government funding.
Ji'an, located in the southeast of Jilin Province, is one of the biggest three border crossings between China and North Korea.
Manp'o is a city in North Korea's northwestern Chagang Province right across the border to Ji'an.
At present, there is an old single-track railway bridge spanning the Yalu River which still connects Ji'an and Manp'o. Constructed between 1937 and 1939 during Japan's Imperial days, the 589.23-meter-long and 16-meter-high bridge can still be used by tourists from the Chinese side who can get across to the North Korean border on foot.
It is not disclosed in the Global Times report whether the Ji'an-to-Manp'o bridge project is another phase of the completed New Yalu River Bridge or the first phase of a totally new bridge project connecting the two socialist neighbor countries.
The 20-kilometer-long cable-stayed New Yalu River Bridge linking Dandong in China's Liaoning Province with North Korea's Sinuiju City has been completed at a reported cost of US$350 million. It was originally scheduled to be opened on Oct. 30, 2014. However, that opening has been postponed indefinitely after it was found that North Korea failed to make good on its contractual obligations.
According to an Associated Press report, "it is beginning to look like Beijing has built a bridge to nowhere." An AP TV News crew dispatched to the site "saw nothing but a dirt ramp at the North Korean end of the bridge, surrounded by open fields."
