Qualla: Bohai Strait Tunnel Project

Bohai Strait Tunnel Project: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Take the two longest undersea tunnels in the world -- Japan's Seikan Tunnel at 23.3 kilometers and the English Channel Tunnel at 37.9 kilometers -- and combine them. The proposed Bohai Strait Tunnel would still be longer. At 123 kilometers total, with 90 kilometers underwater, this project would connect Dalian on the Liaodong Peninsula to Yantai on the Shandong Peninsula, replacing an eight-hour ferry crossing with a 40-minute train ride. It would also be one of the most expensive infrastructure projects ever attempted, with a budget that has risen to 300 billion yuan -- roughly 43 billion US dollars.

Bohai Strait Tunnel Project: The Geography That Demands a Tunnel

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Bohai Strait is the narrow bottleneck connecting the Bohai Sea to the Yellow Sea. It separates two of China's most economically important peninsulas: Liaodong in the northeast, anchored by the port city of Dalian, and Shandong to the southeast, home to Yantai and the broader ...

Bohai Strait Tunnel Project: Bridges, Islands, and a Tunnel Below

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The proposed route is not a simple line from point A to point B. Plans submitted to the National Development and Reform Commission in May 2019 envision a hybrid structure: bridges from Penglai linking the Changshan Islands, the archipelago that dots the southern strait, and then ...

Bohai Strait Tunnel Project: A Dream That Keeps Getting More Expensive

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The tunnel concept has been discussed since at least 2013, when National People's Congress deputies formally proposed a cross-Bohai-Strait connection. In March 2018, the central government expressed interest in getting construction underway 'as soon as possible.' By 2019, when fo...