China’s New Hongqi Bridge Collapses—Could California’s Chinese Bridge Be Far Behind?

On November 11th, a landslide caused China’s newly built Hongqi Bridge “to fracture and collapse,” NBC reports, “sending large pieces of concrete far below in a cloud of dust.” There were no casualties but last year a “partial collapse” of a highway bridge in Shaanxi province killed at least 11 people. These failures revive safety concerns on the new span of the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland. The bridge was built with Chinese steel and Chinese labor, but there’s more about the project people should know.

California boasts the Golden Gate Bridge, the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge over the Carquinez Strait, and the Coronado Bridge linking Coronado and San Diego. These structures were all built with American materials and labor—Alfred Zampa was an ironworker—and have stood the test of time. The new Bay Bridge span broke with that practice.

California politicians turned down federal funding because it would have required American steel. The bridge decks and materials were constructed in China by the Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Company, which at the time had no experience building bridges. The company’s 3,000 employees on the project included steel-cutters, welders, polishers, and engineers.

The bridge came in 10 years late and $5 billion over budget: a lot more than the $250 million to retrofit the original span, damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. The new span was opened in 2013, and in 2014 Bay Area Democrat Mark DeSaulnier, chairman of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, held hearings on the project.

The Chinese steel, experts testified, was too brittle. Bolts and rods were cracked, and every one of the bridge’s 750 panels had to be repaired. In 2013, long metal rods began to snap. Metallurgical engineer Lisa Thomas attributed this to hydrogen embrittlement, a problem with the grade BD steel used on the project.

Geologist Michael Morgan testified that safety problems were covered up and called for a criminal investigation. State audit agencies failed to take action, so Morgan took his story to Charles Piller of the Sacramento Bee, which ran a series on safety concerns with welds, rods, bolts, corrosion, and other components.

In early 2014, water leaks along the suspension structure left rust-colored signs of corrosion. When apprised of the safety issues, then-Gov. Jerry Brown famously said “I mean, look, $h*% happens.” Engineering professionals offered more serious analysis.

University of California, Berkeley, structural engineering professor Abolhasaan Astaneh-Asi told reporters he declined to use the bridge and warned about faulty design. “If a single component fails, the whole thing comes down,” the professor explained. “Fracture critical bridges have been out of favor since the 1960s. And when you look at this new span, there are many things that can go wrong.”

The Hongqi bridge collapse occurred in Sichuan, a seismically active region where in 2008, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake killed more than 69,000 people. By some accounts, nearly 90,000 people were counted dead or missing and 375,000 injured.

The San Francisco area, home to more than 7.7 million people, is seismically active. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a major quake is due in the Bay Area by 2032. Californians will have to wait and see if what can happen does happen.

Before DeSaulnier moved on to Congress, his hearing was broadcast live on the California Channel, the Golden State’s version of C-SPAN, launched in 1993. Under Attorney General Kamala Harris, no criminal investigation of the bridge took place. In 2019, under Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state shut down the California Channel. As Capitol Weekly wondered, “What’s the future of digital legislative transparency in California?”

In April of 2020, Gov. Newsom announced spending of nearly $1 billion on masks with Build Your Dreams, a Chinese motor vehicle company which, at the time, did not manufacture protective gear. In California, what goes around tends to come around.