Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province, has long been billed as "the city of bridges" due to the huge number of bridges in the area as well as technical expertise it has shown in bridge-making.

The city is now home to 11 bridges spanning the Yangtze River and eight bridges across the Hanjiang River.

The Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, which opened to traffic in 1957, is the first double-deck road and rail bridge built over the Yangtze River after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Then a senior official said that the bridge was of great significance to economic growth as it facilitated logistics, trade, and people-to-people exchanges between northern and southern China.

Wuhan then built a variety of bridges based on technological advances, greatly improving urban transportation.

These included its first cable-stayed bridge — the Second Yangtze River Bridge — in 1995, the Yangluo Yangtze River Bridge in 2007, the Gutian Bridge in 2015, and the Yangsigang Yangtze River Bridge in 2019.

Last year, the city welcomed its 11th bridge over the Yangtze River — the Qingshan Bridge.

The project was completely invested, designed and constructed by Wuhan-based enterprises, showcasing China's self-reliance in science and technology, local officials said. With a width of 48 meters, the highway bridge features 10 lanes and is the widest bridge across the Yangtze River.

The main steel structure of the bridge has no lower beams and is called a full floating system, said Xu Gongyi, chief designer of the bridge.

Such an innovative system enables the bridge to "swing "along the cables on both sides to reduce the impact of strong winds and earthquakes, ensuring the security of the main body, Xu said.

He added it is the longest span cable-stayed bridge with a full floating system in the world.

Over the past 60 years, Wuhan has formed a complete industrial chain in the bridge-making sector and cultivated a batch of leading enterprises, which have participated in multiple mega projects around the world, local officials said.

The Hutong Yangtze River Bridge, which opened in 2020 in East China's Jiangsu province, is the world's first road-rail cable-stayed bridge with a span of over 1,000 meters. Its major builders are two Wuhan-headquartered enterprises — China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co, or MBEC, and Second Harbor Engineering Company.

MBEC, whose predecessor is the builder of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, has constructed more than 3,000 bridges around the world, said Mao Weiqi, chief engineer of the group.

Among them, the Padma Multipurpose Bridge in Bangladesh was put into operation in June after eight years of construction, slashing the time taken to travel through the Padma River to as little as 10 minutes from the previous seven to eight hours.

News reports in Bangladesh said the bridge is expected to help increase the country's annual GDP by 1.5 percent and will benefit more than 80 million people.

"It is a bridge of friendship and a model of cooperation between the two countries," Mao said.