What lies ahead

Previously, China's per capita access to transportation was among the lowest in the world.

The government realized that this was a constraint to progress. Expansion of the road network enabled the economy to grow and allowed people all over the country to benefit from growth and gain access to better services. As people in China recognize, roads have therefore been a major driver of poverty reduction.

Over such a long period, there were many challenges - too many for me to list. Perhaps the greatest underlying challenge was for China to become familiar and comfortable with the approaches to road planning, organization and technology that had been successfully used to expand road networks in other countries.