World’s Longest Bridge-Tunnel Makes Southern China More Strongly Connected
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-just-opened-the-worlds-longest-bridge-tunnel-hong-kong-critics-wish-it-never-was-built/2018/10/23/bf05e6c2-d6a3-11e8-9559-712cbf726d1c_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8df9eb61842e
As of Tuesday, October 23rd, China’s $20 billion project to build a sea-crossing between Hong Kong and mainland China opened to traffic after nearly a decade of construction. This bridge is a part of a larger objective of Beijing to connect all of southern China’s Greater Bay Area with similar over-seas bridges, as well as high speed rails and an artificial island located near this new crossing. With a more developed infrastructure network, tourists and workers can more easily travel between the 11 major South Chinese cities, and the semi-independent island city-states of Hong Kong and Macau.
If we visualize southern China as a graph with cities as the nodes and roads/bridges as the undirected edges, then we can apply many of the principles discussed thus far in class. For instance, the completion of this new crossing between China and Hong Kong/Macau establishes strong triadic closure in the network. Previously, travel by car was possible between Hong Kong and Macau, as well as between Hong Kong and mainland China via a series of bridges. However, direct transportation between Macau and mainland China would require a ferry. Therefore, the strong links from Macau, to Hong Kong, to China form a triangle that is now closed with this bridge-tunnel connecting Macau and China directly.
The reinforced connection between Hong Kong and mainland China due to Beijing’s recent efforts can be described using the clustering coefficient. Although the network of cities was always a Strongly Connected Component (every city could be reached from any other city), Hong Kong was in a “tendril” position of the network because it was connected only to the nearest mainland city. The global clustering coefficient as relatively low due to the existence of triplets of nodes that were not mutually connected. However, when the new artificial islands, and infrastructure uniting them, are completed, there will be more direct routes from all 11 major cities to Hong Kong. This will decrease the shortest paths between Hong Kong and other Chinese cities, thereby reducing the diameter of the network. When this is done, the proportion of triplets of nodes in the network that are mutually connected will increase, thus increasing the clustering coefficient towards unity.
However, this situation is not clearly favorable for Hong Kong, whose citizens view the new bridge as a symbol of their permanent attachment to China. Currently, the comparatively capitalist trade regulations in Hong Kong put the city-state in a position to trade favorably with the international economy because they have no lack of trading partners. However, with restrictions from Beijing imminent, Hong Kong fears that their position of power in the trading network may not last in the future.