Japan lost its weight and snatched the Brazilian bridge project, leaving a mess for China to clean up.
Brazil is a country located in South America, the economic strength ranks first in Latin America, belongs to one of the BRICS countries, this country has a rapid economic development and rich tourism resources, but because of the imperfect transportation construction, resulting in unbalanced economic development between some regions of the country. In order to change this situation, the Brazilian government has always attached great importance to the development of the country's infrastructure.
The traffic problem between Salvador, Brazil's second largest industrial city, and Itaparica, is particularly provocative, because the two places are separated by the sea, there are only two options for passage, by car or ferry, but by car can only choose to detour, which takes an hour and a half.
Although the ferry saves time, the ferry is greatly affected by the weather, and if it encounters bad weather, it can only be stopped, which is very inconvenient. In addition to bringing a lot of inconvenience to the lives of local residents, traffic problems also have a great impact on the development of local tourism, and tourists' travel time is strictly limited by the frequency of ships, resulting in poor tourism experience. At the same time, traffic problems also affect the economic development of cities, resulting in uneven distribution of urban economic development.
In order to improve this problem, El Salvador proposed to build a bridge across the sea to connect El Salvador and Itaparica, improving the transportation problem between the two places. However, experts in Brazil evaluated the idea and found that with Brazil's current infrastructure strength, the construction of the bridge could not be completed.
Brazil therefore decided to open tenders worldwide. After the global bidding, infrastructure teams from various countries came to the door, and engineering teams from many countries went to Brazil to conduct field surveys to formulate plans, but after conducting field surveys and listening to Brazil's construction requirements, most teams said that they could not complete it, and only Japan and China stayed.
Due to the very special hydrological and geological conditions of the sea area where the bridge is located, and the maximum depth of the seabed can reach 60 meters, these make the construction quite difficult. And because the bridge is still in a channel, it is also necessary to ensure that large ships can navigate smoothly from under the bridge. This means facing many technical difficulties, such as thin-walled shuttle main towers, cable-stayed section main beams and many other technologies. At the same time, the total length of the project is 46.8 kilometers, of which 12 kilometers are cross-sea bridges, so the scale and difficulty of the project are greater. Moreover, Brazil also requires that the normal navigation of daily traffic cannot be affected during the construction of bridges.
Because of the high capacity here, a shutdown would affect the economy, so Brazil did not want to be out of service when the bridge was built, which added another technical difficulty. One technical problem after another eventually stumped the infrastructure teams of most countries, and eventually only the infrastructure teams of the mainland and Japan remained.
The completion of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge has allowed the mainland to master the experience and technology of deep-sea bridge construction, so the mainland infrastructure team has the confidence and strength to build a deep-sea bridge in Brazil, while the reason why Japan stayed is to compete with China for the title of "infrastructure maniac".
However, in recent years, with the improvement of China's comprehensive national strength, the mainland has made outstanding development in infrastructure, and the construction and development speed is rapid, for example, it only takes 8 hours to demolish an overpass, 9 hours to transform a high-speed railway station, a 30-story building on Dongting Lake that resists a magnitude 9 earthquake in only 350 hours, and ten days to build a 33,900-square-meter Vulcan Mountain Hospital. All of these show the mainland's infrastructure strength and amaze the world, so China has the title of "infrastructure madness" in the world, and Japan wants to take advantage of the Brazilian cross-sea bridge project to regain this title.
In order to be able to obtain this project, Japan promised to give a lower price than China and would build the bridge with the same technology. Moreover, Japan and Brazil have always been on good terms, the two countries have maintained deep economic exchanges, and Japan is Brazil's second largest donor, in this cross-border bidding, the indicators to be considered are not only whether the plan involved is reasonable, but also the international relations between the two countries is also one of the important reference indicators. So under the influence of lower offers and international relations between the two countries, Brazil finally chose Japan to build the bridge.
Brazil feels that Japan is an old industrial power anyway, and its infrastructure strength is also good, and it should be easy to build a qualified cross-sea bridge. After Japan got the project, it also repeatedly said that it would build a high-quality cross-sea bridge for Brazil. In order to build the bridge as soon as possible, Japan's infrastructure team also worked overtime day and night, and finally the bridge was delivered to Brazil within the specified time.
But before Brazil could be happy, just six months later, the bridge had an accident.
Since the sea area where the El Salvador Bridge is located is a very important shipping section in the area, many ships pass by every day, and the freight is very busy. Suddenly, there was a loud bang every day, and the bridge that had just been built for less than half a year suddenly collapsed. The reason turned out to be that when the freighter passed the bridge, it hit the piers of the bridge, causing the middle of the bridge to collapse, and the cars traveling on the bridge also fell into the sea, and the safety accident killed 15 people.
Originally, when the freighter passed the bridge, it should pass smoothly, but due to some technical problems in Japan's construction, the bridge failed to rise as usual within the specified time, and the freighter hit the bridge like this, causing a lot of casualties. And what is very intriguing is that the freighter that collided with the bridge was only slightly damaged in this accident, but the bridge was hit and broken on its own feet, which has to make people wonder whether the quality of the bridge construction is a tofu dregs project.
After the incident, the relevant Brazilian departments conducted an accident investigation at the first time. The results of the investigation showed that it was because Japan did not strictly follow the original standards during the construction. The quality of the building materials used is not up to standard at all, and in order to quickly complete the construction of the bridge, blindly pursue speed and reduce labor costs, after the bridge body is poured with concrete, there is no waiting for the curing time, blindly advancing the progress, and finally completed a tofu dregs project.
In fact, the El Salvador Bridge is not the only tofu dregs project in Japan, and the Can Tho Bridge in Vietnam is also one of them. The project was constructed by Japan, Vietnam and China in three separate lots. However, when the bridge was about to be completed, the bridge collapsed. After investigation, the results showed that the bridge collapsed due to problems in the Japanese tender, and the safety accident caused 54 deaths and 80 injuries, which is also the worst bridge collapse accident in Vietnam.
Brazil has to bear huge economic losses because of the El Salvador bridge accident. For this reason, the Brazilian government sent someone to contact Japan to ask Japan to give a reasonable explanation, and asked Japan to compensate for the bridge accident. For this kind of thing, the Japanese person in charge also immediately apologized to the Brazilian government and people. However, after apologizing, Japan refused to compensate, because Japan felt that it was not at fault, claiming that the El Salvador Bridge was delivered after passing the test in Brazil, so Japan believed that there was no problem with its construction. Japan put the blame for the accident on the freighter. Subsequently, Japan said that it could repair the crashed bridge for Brazil, but Brazil needed to bear the repair cost of $25 million, and finally after several consultations, Brazil could not accept Japan's proposal.
The El Salvador Bridge is a key construction project in Brazil, a key project to boost the economy, increase employment and improve people's livelihood in northeast Brazil.
At the same time, Brazil saw the bridges built by China for other countries, the technical quality is good, because the repair of the bridge and the Japanese government can not be agreed, for the sake of its own economic development, the relevant Brazilian departments through the Chinese embassy, expressed their willingness to spend $150 billion to ask the Chinese team to help rebuild the El Salvador bridge. After negotiation, on November 12, 2020, CRCC 20th Bureau Group, CCCC and the Brazilian state government signed a contract for the construction of the bridge, and the two parties jointly operated the restoration of the Salvador bridge.
After inspecting the scene, the staff of the 12th Bureau of China Railway found that the construction of the Salvador Bridge was very difficult, no less than the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge in the mainland, and even more complex than the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. Therefore, during the preliminary preparations for the reconstruction of the Salvador Bridge, experts from the infrastructure construction team of the 12th Bureau of China Railway in the mainland listed all the difficulties that would be encountered in the process of building the bridge and gave detailed and professional solutions, and China and Brazil reached friendly cooperation in this regard. In the end, the Chinese infrastructure team lived up to Brazil's expectations and rebuilt the Salvador Bridge for Brazil in 6 years.
The new Salvador Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge with a length of 12,400 meters across the sea. The journey between Salvador and Itaparica, which has been shortened from 1.5 hours to 25 minutes, has become the longest bridge across the sea in Latin America.
Now that the mainland's infrastructure is gradually going abroad, more and more overseas large-scale infrastructure projects are in the hands of China, which represents the rise of China's power, and more countries are also seeking cooperation with China.