Li Yuan
When the world’s tallest bridge opened in China’s Guizhou Province in September, a state-run political talk show filmed an episode from its summit to showcase what it called “the remarkable story of China’s path to modernization.”
A Canadian influencer on the panel marveled, “You have projects like this the West could only dream of.”
CNN and NBC broadcast segments of their own about the bridge, which stands roughly 200 stories above a river. So did Matt Walsh, a right-wing commentator. “Why aren’t we building stuff like this any more?” he asked on his show on YouTube. He lamented that America had “lost the will and desire to do great things.”
It would be a mistake to brush off the story of the Guizhou bridge as simply a victory of Chinese propaganda. The reactions to the bridge point to something deeper than admiration for Chinese infrastructure: a widening imbalance between the self-images of the world’s two largest powers.
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