On December 26, 2025, China reached another notable milestone on its already impressive list of infrastructural achievements. It opened the world’s longest expressway tunnel – the 22.13-km Tianshan Shengli Tunnel – to the public, allowing people to travel between northern and southern Xinjiang in just 20 minutes, rather than several hours on dangerous mountain roads.
Photo: Xinhua
The Tianshan Mountain range stretches 2,500 kilometers through central Xinjiang, effectively dividing the Chinese province into a northern and a southern part. Crossing from one side to the other previously involved navigating winding roads at altitudes of up to 4,000 meters, and long detours during the winter, when these roads closed for safety reasons. Luckily, modern technology allowed the Chinese to finally bypass this natural barrier.
Building a giant expressway tunnel at an altitude of 3,000 meters, with temperatures as low as minus 42 C during the winter, in an area characterized by high seismic activity and complex fault zones, is no walk in the park, but Chinese engineers somehow got it done in five years.
Miao Baodong, an engineer with China Communications Construction Co., the company that worked on the project, told China Daily that the project required several cutting-edge technologies and innovative achievements in ultra-long tunnel surveying and design, innovative construction techniques, and intelligent solutions. Of course, the $5 billioninvested in making the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel a reality didn’t hurt either.
The 22.13-kilometer-long Tianshan Shengli Tunnel is the highlight of the Urumqi – Yili Expressway connecting northern and southern Xinjiang, but also an infrastructural marvel that once again shows just how advanced China has become in this sector over the last couple of decades.
