Did you know China's building the world's largest airport on an artificial island is going to be massive?
But why go through all the trouble to build in our airport on the sea?
We discuss how this could change the local economy.
And Motivational Monday is here to turn meh into magic.
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Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm He Young. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yu Shun in the studio.
First on today's show, China's upcoming Dalian -Jinzhou Bay International Airport is poised to become the world's largest airport built on a man -made island.
But why choose to build on the sea rather than expanding the city's existing airport?
The answer lies in Dalian's economic momentum.
As the leading city in Liaoning Province, it has outpaced many counterparts in China's northeastern region.
The new airport will help ease flight congestion while also creating new opportunities for trade, tourism, and local employment.
So, is this the next big thing for airports around the world?
Or will it be too much too soon?
So, guys, tell me about the new airport that's under construction and also there's massive land that's being constructed too.
Yes. So, according to an airport statement, the airport will eventually cover a 20 square kilometer island with four runways.
And, if you don't know how big it is, it is kind of a size of, first of all, 7 .7 square mile, also the size of almost 2 ,800 standard football fields and also, in other words, almost six New York Central Parks.
In other words, it's huge.
Four runways, 900 ,000 square meter passenger terminal, the city started site selection and some work on the airport about 20 years ago, but the construction only began in earnest maybe just a few years ago.
That's according to local media.
And according to China Magazine Newsweek, the construction is divided into two phases.
So, the first phase, by the way, this is not opening tomorrow, right?
This is gonna take a while.
The first phase is due to open in 2035 and at that point, they're looking to handle about 43 million passengers a year.
That's the equivalent of about 328 ,000 flights.
And then phase two, that plans to be finished in 2050, and by that time, they'll be looking at 80 million passengers and 541 ,000 flights a year.
It's a massive, massive project.
Yeah, and after that, once it's all completed, it will become the world's largest airport on an artificial island and that's surpassing both Hong Kong International Airport and Japan's Kansai Airport, which used to be the largest airports on artificial islands.
And you guys didn't mention that the airport construction plan has been in deliberation for 20 years before finally breaking ground.
And why build this airport?
It's not like, okay, Dalian doesn't have an existing airport, but for our international audiences who might not be so familiar with geography in China, tell us a bit more about why this specific city, Dalian.
So first of all, Dalian, this is a city of 7 .5 million people, has long been a transport hub due to its proximity to Japan and South Korea.
And also, the director of the research office of the Institute of Land Development and Regional Economy, Tungfei, he said that Dalian is the most important seaport and gateway city in the economic map of northeast China.
And northeast China, we can imagine it, I think we mentioned it a lot of times in our show.
It is an area that with a kind of climate condition with cool weather, which means it has a lot of economic value in this way, when people are choosing tourism plans in this area.
It's Dalian is warm enough in the summertime to be able to swim at the beach, right?
Dalian has at least one and maybe more quite beautiful beaches in the city.
But then again, in the winter time, because of its location, the northeast region of China, it's cold.
And that means winter tourism is available in that region as well.
That's about the extent of my knowledge on Dalian as a matter of fact.
I don't know too much about the city itself.
Have either of you traveled there before?
No. No, but I've read extensively and well, also, you've seen it in the news for many years and it's a well known tourism city as well.
And like you guys mentioned, it has these like natural advantages as one of those cities that attract a lot of attention, and especially in the northeastern part of China, which is comprised of three provinces and some during wintertime, they usually get very cold.
But Dalian has this natural advantage of, you know, kind of having the best of two worlds kind of thing during the year.
And it's long been seen as a sort of a postcard city of the northeastern part of the region.
And it's so close to those international neighbors that you guys both mentioned, which puts it in a strategic and geographic position that sounds pretty good for an international airport.
Yeah, it can be a hub, right?
An economic hub and a travel hub as well.
And the construction of this airport, obviously, airports enhance, you know, the external accessibility of the city where the airport is located, but it can really help out in the city's economic growth, it can play a huge role in improving things like urban logistics and people flow and capital flow.
So after the completion of the airport, it is going to be more conducive to Dalian and to the region to get more national and perhaps global enterprises and perhaps investors forming a larger scale operation in that city and in that region.
And also if we're talking about like geographical reasons, I actually saw that deputy head of Dalian new airport construction headquarters said that the site, specifically the site of this airport in Jinzhou Bay in the Bohai Sea is the only option recommended by the experts that has a flat seashore,
stable geological structure and favorable meteorological conditions.
So that could be part of the reasons that people choose this location.
And also we mentioned that Dalian has an airport already.
And but there are some like kind of issues, of course, when we're talking about the capacity of the old airport, according to Itai, which is a domestic news outlet, Dalian Zhou Shui, it's an international airport.
The city's international airport has been operating for nearly a century.
Oh, wow. Already met its maximum capacity and has been expanded several times in recent years.
So people are thinking about like getting another one, since a lot of cities in China have like one or even more than one airport.
Yeah. And this airport, I didn't realize it had been operating for a century.
Goodness me. That's a long time.
So it does make sense.
I mean, even hearing just that, it makes sense and it sounds like, oh, OK, maybe it's time for a new airport.
A report from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, they said or they ranked this particular airport, this international airport, 27th in China, that was from 2023.
So obviously, with this new project, it's going to shoot way up the rankings from 27th to number one.
Once it's done, it'll be the largest island made airport in the world.
And also with a lot of these older airports, because when it was first established, usually it's closer to the city center.
But as the city sort of expands and grows and the airport becomes so close to the city center, which is which can be seen as a good or bad thing.
But often it signals that the city possibly needs another airport.
And usually it's built so far out because it wants to allow the space for development.
You can see that in Beijing as well.
You know, we have the Beijing International Capital Airport, which is a fantastic one now.
And that's located in the northern part of the city, correct?
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We have a new one in the southern part, which is so much further south and going there feels like quite a trip.
It feels like a trip.
Yeah. Of the city. You know, you talk about this current Dalian airport and its proximity to the city center within, you know, 10 kilometers.
It's only 10 kilometers away from the city center.
And they refer to that as an urban airport.
And as you mentioned, well, sure, that's very convenient for passengers, right?
When they arrive, you know, 10 kilometers and you're in downtown.
But then you've got problems with expansion.
And when you have an urban airport, then long term development is a challenge.
Things like renovating, things like expanding.
Those are very, very challenging things when you have an airport basically in the middle of a city.
Right. So that partially explains why they need a new one.
And this is not necessarily news in China.
Beijing, Shanghai both have two big airports and also in smaller cities, but still massive, such as Chongqing, Hangzhou, Xiyi and Zhengzhou and Kunming.
They're all having second airports being built as such.
But why on the sea have they decided to build this second airport for Dalian?
So the reason that the airport attracts great industry attention is because it's the first Chinese airport built on an artificial island.
And the nearest distance from this artificial island to the shore is like three kilometers.
It was built by the backfilling on water and the land backfilling area is over, as we said, 20 square kilometers.
So in 2016, the then deputy commander in chief of the Dalian New Airport Construction Command said in an interview that Dalian has very little land and very limited space to build an airport.
And then since 2002, the municipal government had organized experts to carry out site selection work.
And as I said, after that, they, with all of the consideration, they choose that they chose it after like long term and repeated evaluation and comparison.
The conclusion was that there were no large civil airport size available within 100 kilometers from the main urban area on land, but there were ideal conditions for a new airport available on the sea.
Ideal as one may say.
But it's not like this construction plan is not met with great challenges.
Sure. Yeah, the project itself has, you know, you're building an airport on the sea, so it's going to have complex geological conditions.
Drilling is going to be very, very challenging at times.
The construction schedule might present a more of a challenge than it would if the airport were on land as well.
And I don't know if that has to do with changing land conditions or sea conditions or what that might be.
But that's one of the challenges.
There's the unique nature of the marine environment as well.
So there's a lot of technological challenges that require extra consideration, structural, geological, operational, environmental, yeah, environmental factors, too.
You have to consider the wildlife that's living in the sea in that area.
And what would it do to the ecosystem there?
There are more things, I guess, to consider when you're building an airport on the ocean.
Yes. So the issue of like ground or foundation settlement is quite important.
And we've been we've seen like some of the previous examples actually, the backfilling materials will lead to huge pressure on the seabed foundation and ensuring the stability and safety of airport facilities has become a top priority.
And according to some relevant reports, the world's like first offshore airport, Kansai Airport in Japan has experienced uncontrollable settlement.
Although this is also related to the geological conditions in the Osaka Bay, where the airport is located.
And it also can be seen that the construction and later maintenance of the offshore airport are not easy.
So this is something that people when constructing it need to consider.
This was in the news just a few days ago, as a matter of fact, they were talking about the Kansai Airport in Japan.
It was built about 30 years ago, and it's been sinking at a rate of about point three meters per year.
And it has sunk in total roughly 11 .5 meters according to that media outlet.
And that one was built on top of two artificial islands in, as you mentioned, you should the Osaka Bay.
Pardon me. And those platforms, they've been gradually and progressively drifting away from the city center.
They're dealing with a big problem there.
Right. So there are there will be some unintended consequences, I think, with a lot of these massive man driven projects.
And it also, well, it begs the question, also the wisdom of experts to accommodate and come up with solutions when that happens.
But also when you look at what happens here in China with these manmade islands, this is not the first one, obviously.
And there's another interesting example of a planned construction of an airport in Sanya, Hainan Province.
They plan to build an airport on a manmade island by backfilling on the sea.
As you guys mentioned, this is a similar process.
And the overall project is expected to take investment of over 100 billion yuan, or that's 13 .7 billion US dollars.
That's a huge, I think, point for people to bear in mind because these are massively expensive projects.
That's the first sort of, I guess, big point for people to remember.
Second of all, with the Sanya example, it has really fragile ecological and environmental surrounding.
And there's the Chinese white dolphins, which apparently lives in that area or swims in that area.
And you've got the Sanya Coral Reef National Nature Reserve, coastal coral reefs and agriculture and fishery areas as such.
When you talk about building a massive piece of land in the ocean, there's just a lot to be considered.
Yeah. And in Japan, just a little more on the Kansei Airport, they're doing what they can to stabilize it.
They've spent 140 million dollars, this is from arrow time, 140 million dollars on dam building and just strengthening in general.
But still, it's predicted that the airport will be totally buried, totally buried by the year 2056.
So there is much, much, much to consider, not only during the construction, but also about the future of the airport as well because of where you're building it.
Yes. And investment and also what kind of I think there's just a lot of calculation, accounting and projection that needs to all be taken under consideration for a big project like this one to take off.
And what do you see as maybe its impact on the local economy and even in the region?
Yeah. So this is actually, of course, we can see a big thing to the livelihood there.
An airport is not just a transportation hub.
It's also an employment center, right?
Providing various job opportunities and promoting employment in related industries no matter it's in the airports or like surrounding the airport.
Right. And also as a gateway for goods and people, it accelerates product circulation, boosts international trade and investment, of course.
And this is like driving the development of surrounding infrastructure and real estate and also increasing property values.
Also, it generates revenue for the government through taxes, which can be reinvested in public services, further amplifying its economic impact, which means it is like developing or creating a whole community over there to, like, again, reinvest in the no matter it's public infrastructure or public
services. Yeah. Think about every time you go to a major airport, we don't really count the number of people working in there, of course.
But if you think about the sheer number of employees working in an airport, that's a lot of job opportunities.
Now, those people need a place to live.
So that does something for the housing market in the region as well.
Those people need a place to spend the money that they make while they're working.
So that does well for the restaurant industry.
Or you see where I'm going with this, right?
So an airport of that scale has a larger effect on the economy than we realize.
And also, you know, you're creating a global hub as well.
So the supply chain management for different businesses, different industries, is affected when a new airport pops up in an area.
It just makes things, I was going to say, a lot more convenient, but I should phrase it like this.
More opportunities present themselves in many different facets.
Oh, yeah, job opportunities for sure.
And for all local economies, this is what they're looking for as well.
And Dalian is located in Liaoning Province, one of the three brothers up there in the northeastern part of China.
And we've been talking about the northeast regions of China sort of experiencing a relatively difficult time because it's seen as heyday decades ago being the place in China where it's known for really fertile land.
So we know that agriculture is strong there.
It produces fantastic rice and also heavy industry.
But in the last few decades, some people would even compare it to the Rust Belt in America because with the dwindling and decline of the heavy industry, it's been sort of struggling to find what is the future for itself.
And we can see in recent years that tourism is becoming a big thing, but they're still trying to look for maybe a new branding, new industries as growth points.
So while if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, building a huge international airport on the sea might not seem as that big a deal, but it becomes an important puzzle in this wider region piece of the puzzle.
You're absolutely right.
And you talk about taking a step back and looking just take a step back and look at the map.
The northeast region of China where Dalian is because of its geographic location.
I was reading this on the CGTN website as a matter of fact.
It's located in the middle of three important economic entities, Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and then you've got Russia, Siberia and Mongolia as well.
So a really solid and strong economy in that region, not just the city of Dalian, but the northeast region itself that can bring a massive amount of trading opportunities for that region and for the other areas I mentioned, too.
So, you know, in the past, agriculture was leading the way, heavy industry was leading the way.
But now as the region is looking for new opportunities, perhaps this airport will provide more economic opportunities in terms of trade with other regions.
Of course. And that's why I saw that once completed, this airport will contribute to the local efforts in enhancing the integrated multi model transportation hub network system, including like sea, land, air and rail transportation.
So no matter like it's maybe it's a little bit far away from there or it's as close or neighboring this area, it can all be a hub of connecting all of these regions.
Yes. And that's definitely a promising future to look into.
Also, if we might take another step back and just look at China's development in the last few decades, you might see the trend that China has made massive investments in infrastructure and a lot of them succeeded, but not all of them have paid off in the way initially hoped.
And I guess there's the valid concern with building a huge airport on the sea as well.
China has, well, poured billions into infrastructure projects from high speed rail networks to airports, bridges and even new cities.
And for example, the country has built the world's largest high speed rail system connecting hundreds of cities across the city, across the country, I mean, in a fraction of the time that it would take by car or plane.
And the sheer scale of these projects is remarkable.
It really has helped China to achieve rapid urbanization and boost its economy as well as create millions of jobs.
And this airport has raised the concern for some people about the overcapacity issues and also maybe debt driven development.
But at the moment, we're seeing that the the project is definitely off the ground.
And we're seeing also the sort of long term vision of this.
That is, maybe some projects might not show immediate returns, but they can lay the groundwork for future economic development, as well as when you're building an airport or like the high speed rail system in China.
It could in the future alleviate regional inequality.
So it's really the long game we're looking at here.
