As 2025 drew to a close, a cluster of mega projects in Sichuan were unveiled to the world. In a mere 6 milliseconds, clean electricity generated upstream of the Jinsha River traversed 1,900 kilometers, instantly "flashing" to millions of households in East China. On December 18, 2025, the Jinshang-Hubei ±800 kV ultra-high-voltage direct current transmission project was officially completed and put into operation. This major energy artery out of Sichuan took nearly three years to build; with over 248 kilometers of its line situated above 4,000 meters in altitude, a tower standing approximately 65 meters tall and weighing about 85 tons was erected on Setongma Mountain in Batang County at an elevation of 4,797.9 meters, setting a world record for the highest-altitude construction of an ultra-high-voltage power project.
On December 31, 2025, the Mabian-Zhaojue section of the Leshan to Xichang Expressway opened to traffic. As the first "sky-high passage" cutting through the heart of the Greater and Lesser Liangshan Mountains, it navigates the high mountains and deep valleys of the eastern Hengduan Range, boasting an exceptionally high bridge-and-tunnel ratio of 82%, with its longest tunnel stretching 15.3 kilometers. To overcome the challenge of ice and snow on high-altitude sections during winter, the project pioneered the use of an "underfloor heating" system—an intelligent loop heat pipe snow-melting system—in Southwest China. Diverting water from the Dadu River to supplement the Minjiang River's insufficiency, the Yinda-Jimin Project, Sichuan's largest and longest trans-basin water diversion project in history, is accelerating its pace. It will tunnel through 7 regional fracture zones and multiple large faults, utilizing a nearly 261-kilometer-long water diversion line to "quench the thirst" of the Chengdu Plain. The world's largest underground powerhouse cavern complex (Baihetan Hydropower Station), the world's first bridge with a highway and high-speed railway on the same deck (Yibin Lingang Yangtze River Rail-Road Bridge), and China's first tunnel to apply a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) in the construction of a parallel adit (Daliangshan No. 1 Tunnel)—across the landscapes of Sichuan, one mega project after another rises from the ground, challenging engineering limits with fearless determination.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Sichuan implemented over 1,600 provincial key projects with a total investment nearing 8.8 trillion yuan, completing investments exceeding 4 trillion yuan. Major projects represented by transportation, energy, water conservancy, communication networks, and new infrastructure have accelerated the opening of strategic corridors, reshaping Sichuan's economic geography. As the province enters the 15th Five-Year Plan period, these mega projects promise even greater possibilities.
Unfolding a map of Sichuan reveals the Chengdu Plain nestled within a ring of mountains formed by the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Hengduan Mountains, Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, and Qinling-Bashan Mountains. Faced with these towering peaks, the dream of "going out" has always been a persistent pursuit for the people of Sichuan. While the world knows the millennia-old lament, "The road to Shu is harder than climbing to the sky," they may not fully grasp the Shu people's yearning and aspiration for "making the road to Shu as easy as walking on level ground." In the new era, the Central Committee has entrusted Sichuan with missions such as building a strategic highland for opening up to the west and a new base for participating in international competition, as well as creating a strategic base for ensuring the supply of important primary products for the nation. This has created historic opportunities for Sichuan to compete for the layout of major productive forces projects and enhance its comparative locational advantages. For instance, following the Central Committee's major decision to promote the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, the Chengdu-Chongqing region was designated as the "fourth pole" in the national comprehensive three-dimensional transportation network, alongside the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
Consequently, transportation infrastructure accounts for a significant proportion of the provincial key projects implemented in Sichuan in recent years. Over the past five years, the main battlefield of national railway construction has been in Sichuan, where railway investment has consistently led the nation. It is noteworthy that at the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan period, Sichuan did not have a single high-speed railway with a design speed of 350 km/h. The determined statement, "We would rather sell our pots and pans to build the Chengdu-Dazhou-Wanzhou high-speed railway," reflects the resolute determination of Sichuan people to actively integrate into the national high-speed rail network. If ancient times had the Foolish Old Man's determination to move mountains, today we witness the Sichuan people's heart for building roads. Looking back five years later: The Chengdu-Yibin high-speed railway, Sichuan's first newly built 350 km/h line, opened and has transported over 29 million passengers in two years, achieving a fastest travel time of 1 hour and 13 minutes between Chengdu and Yibin. The Sichuan-Chongqing section of the 350 km/h Chongqing-Kunming high-speed railway began operation, ending the history of no direct railway connection between the southern Sichuan urban agglomeration and western Chongqing. The Chengdu-Kunming railway double-track line was fully connected, ushering the Greater Liangshan region into the "bullet train era." The Qingbaijiang to Huangshengguan section of the Sichuan-Qinghai railway opened, making the dream of taking a bullet train to Huanglong and Jiuzhaigou a reality. The Bazhong-Nanchong high-speed railway commenced operation, ending the history of no railway in several old revolutionary base area counties. Meanwhile, the Chengdu-Dazhou-Wanzhou high-speed railway, long anticipated by the people of Sichuan, has entered the construction phase for ballastless track beds, station buildings, and signaling, telecommunication, and electrification works. Currently, ongoing railway projects within Sichuan include the Sichuan-Tibet Railway, Chengdu-Chongqing Middle Line high-speed railway, Chengdu-Dazhou-Wanzhou high-speed railway, Chongqing-Xi'an high-speed railway, Xining-Chengdu railway, and Nanchong-Guang'an intercity railway. Railways already built or under construction now cover 21 prefectures and cities in the province, with the operating mileage exceeding 7,000 kilometers, and the operating mileage of high-speed rail jumping to 11th place nationally. These achievements are particularly remarkable for Sichuan, a province with a vertical elevation difference exceeding 7,000 meters and an area of 486,000 square kilometers.
Projects aimed at filling the "blank spots" on the road map have been equally challenging. Over the five years, Sichuan newly built over 3,000 kilometers of expressways, connecting 15 counties previously without expressway access to the national transportation artery. The opening of sections like the Jinyang-Ningnan part of the Yibin-Panzhihua Expressway and the Mabian-Zhaojue section of the Leshan-Xichang Expressway has helped counties like Jinyang and Leibo in Liangshan Prefecture break free from geographical constraints. The cumulative operational length of the Jiuzhaigou-Markang Expressway reached 186 kilometers, putting the grassland traversed by the Red Army during the Long March onto a development "fast lane." The opening of the Jiuzhaigou-Mianyang Expressway completely ended the history of no expressway access for Jiuzhaigou, Pingwu, and Beichuan counties, significantly shortening their distance to the outside world. Currently, Sichuan's total expressway mileage has surpassed 11,000 kilometers, ranking 3rd nationally, while its total road mileage and rural road mileage both rank 1st in the country. Including waterway transportation, the province's comprehensive transportation network mileage reaches 443,000 kilometers, also ranking 1st nationally—a distance equivalent to that from the Earth to the Moon, with the new mileage added during the 14th Five-Year Plan period nearly enough to circle the equator. By the end of 2025, Sichuan had 54 outbound corridors for railways, expressways, and waterways, basically establishing a strategic comprehensive transportation corridor framework of "four directions and eight corridors," efficiently connecting 7 land-based international transport routes and 4 maritime international transport routes. This is the "New Song of the Shu Roads" composed by key projects, propelling Sichuan's transportation from mere "accessibility" towards "smooth flow." Traveling the Shu roads today, one sings without knowing the former difficulties.
The age-old adages, "If you want to get rich, build roads first" and "When the train whistles, gold pours in," vividly illustrate the profound impact of transportation infrastructure on local economic development. Corridors like the Sichuan-Qinghai Railway and Jiuzhaigou-Mianyang Expressway have bridged "poetry and distant lands." By November 22, 2025, the annual tourist arrivals at Jiuzhaigou Valley scenic area had exceeded 7 million, hitting a record high with a year-on-year increase of over 27%, including a nearly 44% surge in inbound tourists. Meanwhile, news emerged that Chengdu Tianfu International Airport will commence its second-phase construction. Having commenced operation in June 2021, its passenger throughput surpassed 40 million in 2023 and reached nearly 55 million in 2024. With the first phase designed for an annual capacity of 60 million passengers, it is approaching its "saturation point." This reflects the constant flow of people. However, the efficient circulation of goods, though less visible, unleashes an even more significant wealth effect. Key projects support Sichuan in accelerating its integration into a comprehensive open pattern characterized by linkage between land and sea and mutual reinforcement between the eastern and western regions. Chengdu is speeding up the construction of the China-Europe Railway Express assembly center hub, while cities like Mianyang, Zigong, and Panzhihua are building supporting base projects for assembly centers. These coordinated efforts across the province jointly steer the "steel camel caravans" on the Silk Road. Over five years, the China-Europe Railway Express (Chengdu-Chongqing) has made over 38,000 trips, making it the busiest, most widely cooperated, and most stable China-Europe Railway Express service in the country. It directly transports thousands of varieties of goods from Sichuan—including complete vehicles, auto parts, laptops, and dozens of other categories—as well as "Sichuan-brand" agricultural products like Panzhihua mangoes, Yibin eels, Jiajiang tea, Anyue lemons, and Xiaojin apples to over a hundred cities globally.
While the China-Europe Railway Express (Chengdu-Chongqing) focuses on westbound and northbound routes, the Longchang-Luzhou-Xuyong Railway, which officially opened on December 25, 2025, will connect to the under-construction Huangtong-Baise Railway in Guizhou, forming Sichuan's closest southbound sea access channel. This allows Sichuan to "borrow a boat to go to sea" via the Beibu Gulf, tapping into the vast consumer market of over 2 billion people in Southeast and South Asia. Data shows that ASEAN has already become Sichuan's largest trading partner. If comprehensive transportation corridors promote the stability of industrial and supply chains and the sustained expansion of consumption, Sichuan also possesses another strategic corridor crucial to national energy security: the new corridor for transmitting clean energy. The immense forces of hundreds of millions of years of crustal movement and nature's artistry have made Sichuan the region richest in clean energy resources in China. A key task during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, through advancing key projects, was to transform these unique resource advantages into a green energy supply serving the entire nation. On December 19, 2025, with the full commissioning of the Yinjiang Hydropower Station on the Jinsha River, Sichuan's installed hydropower capacity surpassed the 100 GW mark, becoming the first province in China to enter the "100 GW era" for hydropower. An installed capacity of 100 GW is equivalent to 4.5 Three Gorges Dams or 1.6 times the planned capacity of the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River hydropower project. It could meet the annual residential electricity needs of approximately 500 million people or power about 178 million electric vehicles for a full year. Behind this breakthrough lies the completion of epoch-making mega projects like the Baihetan, Wudongde, and Lianghekou hydropower stations, as well as new achievements in the construction of the Yalong River Basin hydro-wind-solar integrated demonstration base. Furthermore, the commissioning of high-speed power transmission channels out of Sichuan, such as Yazhong-Jiangxi, Baihetan-Jiangsu, Baihetan-Zhejiang, and Jinshang-Hubei, ensures that clean electricity can be "generated and transmitted efficiently."
While rivers surge across the surface, a network of gas veins crisscrosses underground. The total natural gas resources in the Sichuan Basin account for about one-third of the nation's total. Over these five years, focusing on the goal of building a national-level natural gas (shale gas) production base with an annual capacity of hundreds of billions of cubic meters, Sichuan has accelerated projects like the CNPC's exploration and development of the Anyue-Penglai gas field in the Central Sichuan Paleo-uplift and the Sinopec Weirong Shale Gas Field Longmaxi Formation capacity construction project. Sichuan's annual natural gas output has steadily ranked first in the country. Along the major corridors of "West-East Power Transmission" and "West-East Gas Pipeline," Sichuan continuously delivers green power to the nation: out of every 100 kWh of hydropower generated nationally, 30 kWh come from Sichuan; out of every 100 cubic meters of natural gas consumed nationally, 24 cubic meters are produced in Sichuan. On December 31, 2025, with the simultaneous commissioning of the two million-kilowatt Suorong and Chabang photovoltaic projects on the Yalong River, Sichuan's installed new energy capacity broke through 32 GW as the 14th Five-Year Plan concluded. The province's total installed power capacity exceeded 150 GW, marking a critical step in Sichuan's energy structure transformation and solid progress in building a strong clean energy province. Paraphrasing a popular meme: Sichuan—you might not know me, but you've probably used my electricity (or gas).
Straddling China's first and second topographic steps, Sichuan encompasses almost all types of landforms found on Earth except oceans and deserts, including plains, hills, mountains, plateaus, river valleys, snow-capped mountains, and glaciers, resembling a miniature version of China. In recent years, many key projects implemented in Sichuan, especially those in transportation and energy, are often located in high mountain and gorge areas, requiring the overcoming of world-class technical challenges rarely encountered in plains. Consequently, Sichuan has become a natural testing ground and important birthplace for numerous mega projects. The Sichuan-Qinghai Railway (Qingbaijiang to Huangshengguan section) traverses the Longmen, Minshan, and West Qinling mountains, crosses major rivers like the Minjiang and Bailong rivers, passes through active fault zones 11 times, and has an altitude variation along the route exceeding 2,500 meters—higher than the main peak of Mount Hua. The bridge-and-tunnel ratio in the mountainous sections reaches an astonishing 99%, earning it the nickname "super subway" from netizens. Taking the Desheng Tunnel as an example: nearly 23 kilometers long, its surrounding rock is mostly phyllite, slate, and sandstone—collapsing upon touch and crumbling when squeezed, akin to "digging a hole in a block of tofu," where every inch of advance was taken with extreme caution. "If there is no path ahead, I will tread one." The process of tackling difficulties is inherently a process of innovation. Faced with extreme construction environments, builders have cut paths through mountains and built bridges across rivers, reaching the pinnacle of engineering technology, achieving hardcore engineering prowess, and exploring a series of experiences and practices promoted nationwide.
Amid the mountains and rivers of Sichuan, world-leading engineering marvels have been born: the world's deepest buried highway tunnel—the Grand Canyon Tunnel on the Emeishan-Hanyuan Expressway; the world's tallest pier bridge—the Jinyang River Super Major Bridge; the world's longest-span non-thrust composite arch bridge—the Tuojiang River Super Major Bridge on the Chengdu-Chongqing Middle Line high-speed railway. The Baihetan Hydropower Station set six world records; the Shuangjiangkou Hydropower Station boasts the world's highest dam height among built and under-construction dams; the Kela Phase I photovoltaic power station is the world's largest and highest-altitude hydro-photovoltaic complementary power station; the Lianghekou hybrid pumped storage power station is the world's largest hybrid pumped storage project... The under-construction Yuanbao interchange on the Xichang-Xianggelila Expressway aims to build a rare underground interchange inside a mountain, which will become the world's largest fully underground interchange on a mountainous expressway. In terms of investment, the Jinshan Tunnel may not stand out among provincial key projects. However, it pioneered the application of the TBM, a "mountain-piercing sharp tool," in national and provincial trunk highway construction. As the nation's longest secondary highway tunnel at 9.35 kilometers, it slashes the cross-mountain travel time from a minimum of one hour to just 10 minutes, completely solving the problem of impassability due to heavy snow for 110,000 people on both sides of the mountain.
It is important to recognize that Sichuan is located in the upper reaches of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, with nearly 35% of its counties located in key ecological function zones. These special conditions compel engineering construction to move towards "green" development, implementing the concept of green development in practice. The important power line relocation project for the Chengdu-Dazhou-Wanzhou high-speed railway (Nanchong section) involved moving 7 ultra-high-voltage or high-voltage lines 6 kilometers back to avoid a "bird corridor"—a crucial migratory path for birds in the Jialing River basin. The route of the Leshan-Xichang Expressway's Mabian-Zhaojue section passes through an area densely populated with wild dove trees (Davidia involucrata) in the Daxiangling Mountains. The project team compared 31 route alternatives, limiting the number of dove trees that had to be transplanted to just 0.76% of the regional total. The survival rate of the 2,900 transplanted dove trees exceeded 90% over three years, far surpassing the expected rate of 55% to 70%. These awe-inspiring mega projects showcase China's speed, strength, wisdom, and creativity, becoming distinctive and prestigious name cards for Sichuan. From another perspective, these engineering projects have driven the development of Sichuan's equipment manufacturing and construction industries. The Chengdu-Deyang high-end energy equipment cluster was selected as a national advanced manufacturing cluster, and Sichuan's photovoltaic industry scale and innovation level rank among the top in the nation. The Sichuan construction industry, having accumulated rich experience from these mega projects, is venturing overseas to undertake projects, constructing the Bizerte Bridge in Tunisia, the Suez Canal Railway Bridge in Egypt, the Pokhara International Airport in Nepal, the King Salman Port shiplift project in Saudi Arabia... This is another expression of the reshaping of Sichuan's economic geography.
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