China's top five engineering feats

1 The West to East Electric Power Transmission Project

China spent 526.5 billion yuan (£50.7 billion) between 2001 and 2010 to funnel electricity from power stations in the interior of the country to the neon-lit cities of its coasts.

Three main transmission routes were set up, sending electricity from Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi province to Beijing and Tianjin, from Sichuan to the central regions around Shanghai, and from Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi provinces to China's factory heartlands around Guangzhou.

2 The South to North Water Transfer Project

Setting itself another huge engineering challenge, China has budgeted some 500 billion yuan (£48 billion) to shift enormous volumes of water from the wet and rainy south of the country to the arid planes of the north. Over the next 40 years, China will build vast canals across the country, diverting water northwards.

3 The "Five Vertical, Seven Horizontal" National Motorway Project

Between 1991 and 2008, China laid nearly 22,000 miles of new motorways, a road skeleton that linked up the country's major regions, from Manchuria and Inner Mongolia in the north, Shanghai in the east, Yunnan and Tibet in the west, and the Pearl River delta in the south.

The cost was an estimated 900 billion yuan and the project was finished 13 years ahead of schedule.

4 The Three Gorges Dam

At a cost of 180 billion yuan, China dammed the mighty Yangtze river in a project that began in 1994 and was fully completed in 2009. In the process, 1.3 million people were moved out of their homes, which were flooded as the water level of the river rose. The dam, a giant hydroelectric power station, has a capacity of 22,500MW, but critics say it has had a huge environmental impact on the area, triggering landslides and altering the ecosystem in the river.

5 The Beijing to Shanghai High Speed Rail Link

Built in just over three years at a cost of £16,000 for every metre of track, the high-speed rail link from Beijing to Shanghai has more than halved the journey time between China's two most important cities to just under five hours.