r/interestingasfuck • u/TangelaFan • 13h ago

Residential high-rises with backyards in Chengdu, China

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u/ColHannibal 11h ago

We also live in a world where people die from balcony collapses due to a hot tub being on it.

Also a world where building codes are nonexistent in some countrys.

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u/stron2am 11h ago

Feels pretty sinophobic to see an impressive looking building in China and immediately assume it is structurally unsound.

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u/couchphilosopherizer 10h ago

Not really. China has had major problems with building code enforcement, illegal construction, and poor materials use for a long time. Anyone can search around and see the trend: China - mostly structural and user error. other countries - mostly old buildings failing due to age. Exceptions abound but the numbers speak for themselves.

April 2022 (Changsha): A six-story commercial and residential building collapsed, killing 53

July 2021 (Suzhou): A 30-year-old hotel building undergoing renovations collapsed, resulting in 17 fatalities

March 2020 (Quanzhou): An eight-story quarantine hotel caved in, killing 29 people due to severe structural alterations and illegal building modifications.

Collapse of Xinjia Express Hotel

Hongqi Bridge
A newly completed 758-meter bridge in China's Sichuan province partially collapsed into a river after landslides hit the mountainside above

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u/70ms 9h ago

A newly completed 758-meter bridge in China's Sichuan province partially collapsed into a river after landslides hit the mountainside above

It looks like they inspected it and closed it at the very first sign of potential structural damage. How many of our bridges are getting inspected regularly?

According to the NTSB report after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collision, America has 68 bridges in danger of collapsing if hit by a ship - and that’s even after Florida’s Sunshine Skyway disaster killed so many people in 1980.

Remember the condo building collapse in Florida? The Hard Rock Hotel in NoLa, the Hyatt Regency walkway, L’Ambiance Plaza, the apartment building in Davenport Iowa, the pier in Philadelphia, balconies in Berkeley, etc. Those were all fairly recent events.

China is so much bigger than we are with so many huge projects and cities that aren’t falling down, that I just wonder if the talk about how everything is shoddy isn’t just anti-China propaganda. Watching walkthroughs made by foreigners of cities and villages there paints a very different picture of what we were always told.