In the early morning of August 22nd, a steel wire fracture accident occurred at the construction site of the Jiaozha Yellow River Super Bridge on the Chuanqing Railway, officially reported to have resulted in 12 deaths and 4 missing individuals. This bridge, known as the “world’s largest double-track continuous steel truss arch bridge,” was only days away from being completed, but due to the failure of a key component, it led to significant casualties, once again raising questions about the engineering quality and construction safety of China’s state-owned enterprise, China Railway Construction Corporation.
The accident took place around 3 a.m. on August 22nd, while crucial steel wire tensioning operations were being carried out just before the final closure of the Jiaozha Yellow River Super Bridge. Sixteen workers on site – including 15 construction workers and one project site manager – were performing routine operations when a sudden steel cable rupture accident occurred.
Eyewitnesses at the scene, speaking to media outlets such as Red Star News and Extreme Vision News, described the accident as happening in an instant, with a huge noise akin to an earthquake. The steel cable rupture caused the steel arch to fall, the tower top tension platform to collapse simultaneously, leading to all 16 workers falling. Footage from the accident site showed that a section of the bridge, about tens of meters long, fell into the Yellow River, with the fracture point located near the east side of Hualong Hui Autonomous County, the broken walkway inserted into the river at an angle.
According to local residents, the bridge was close to being fully connected, with only a distance of 90 meters left to close, but the right-side rope suddenly broke, resulting in the collapse of the green steel pipe structure. Workers involved in the project noted that the age of the trapped workers ranged mainly from 30 to 50 years old, hailing from provinces such as Henan, Hubei, Hunan, and Guizhou. On the night of the accident, the construction team was adjusting the hoisting cables in preparation for the subsequent closure operation.
Some netizens commented, “Why is infrastructure construction so rushed these days? It’s because workers are working around the clock. How could the construction rope break? This is undoubtedly the result of layers of subcontracting; for the sake of maximizing profits, the main contractor only pays lip service to safety. In such bridge collapse situations, did the safety helmets and harnesses guarantee the workers’ lives and property?”
The Jiaozha Yellow River Super Bridge is located at the junction of Jianzha County in Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, and Hualong Hui Autonomous County in Haidong City, a critical control project on the Chuanqing Railway. The total length of the bridge is 1596.2 meters, with the main bridge designed as a three-span continuous steel truss arch bridge of 141 meters + 366 meters + 141 meters, with a main span of 366 meters.
Official data indicates that it is the world’s largest double-track continuous steel truss arch bridge and also China’s first railway steel truss arch bridge to span the Yellow River. In terms of project progress, the bridge was originally planned to be completed before the end of July 2025, but the timeline was later adjusted to August. To expedite the project, the construction team adopted a “white + black” two-shift operation mode, making nighttime construction routine.
According to personnel from China Railway Group’s China Railway Bridge Bureau, the direct cause of the accident was the fracture of the anchor beam, leading to the critical support loss of the steel wire, causing a chain reaction like dominoes falling. The anchor beam, as a core component anchoring the inclined cable, was relied upon for the structural support of the bridge deck entirely.
The project employed the cantilever assembly and inclined tensioning method, with the main and adjacent spans balanced through thousands of tons of tension, with the maximum cable tension in the adjacent span reaching up to 1161 tons. Professor Peng Weibing from Zhejiang University’s School of Civil Engineering, in an interview with China News Weekly, analyzed that the cable breakage might stem from two reasons: either the cable itself had quality defects, or construction errors or improper operations led to the failure.
Despite safety measures such as safety nets and five-point harnesses being in place, in the event of an overall bridge collapse, these conventional safety measures failed to effectively protect the workers.
The design firm, China Tiesiju Architectural Design Institute under China Railway Construction, stated in related academic papers that the bridge design scheme fully considered environmental protection, flood control, and other factors, with structural calculations indicating that the strength and stiffness met relevant specifications.
However, Peng Weibing emphasized that current monitoring technology struggles to identify local fractures in suspension cables entirely, especially when stress abruptly increases, leading to instant failure. Although the construction unit utilized Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology and monitoring components to control construction errors, as well as conducted sampling inspections on key bolts, this incident still exposed potential technical and managerial oversights.
As a central-level infrastructure giant supervised by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, China Railway Group has faced repeated quality issues in its projects in recent years, prompting industry criticism of systematic management flaws.
On March 28, 2025, a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Myanmar affected Thailand, resulting in the collapse of a building under construction in Bangkok contracted by the China Railway Tenth Bureau, causing at least 8 deaths and 110 people trapped. The building was the only one that collapsed in the quake-hit area, and subsequent investigations revealed that signatures of 30 engineers on the project supervision documents were forged, exposing severe flaws in quality control.
Similar quality issues have also been prevalent in overseas projects. In 2024, the Novi Sad Train Station roof in Serbia collapsed, resulting in 16 deaths. The station’s reconstruction was overseen by Chinese companies, including China Railway International and China Communications Construction Corporation. The accident sparked nationwide protests, with the public strongly condemning corruption and dereliction of duty in the project.
Investigations disclosed that the two Chinese firms illegally diverted $115.6 million through means like false invoicing, with Chinese entities profiting $18.8 million, leading to drastically compromised construction quality.
These cases reflect systematic issues in key aspects such as material procurement, construction management, and oversight inspection in China Railway projects. Despite the company’s continuous emphasis on its technical capabilities, the frequent occurrence of safety accidents highlights clear regulatory loopholes, negatively impacting the international reputation of the enterprise.