The Huajiang Canyon Bridge is not just any bridge. It has a panoramic elevator that takes you to the top. The height is dizzying: 625 meters above the canyon. There is also a part where the floor is made of glass. It is possible to walk across a wooden bridge equivalent to the top of a 175-story building.
The bridge is accompanied by a major tourist attraction next door: hotel, restaurant and viewpoint. And the icing on the cake: 5G towers. Fast internet has arrived. A man says he spends two hours a day broadcasting live from the comforts of his new inn, which is in that village over there, just under the bridge. "After I started managing the inn, my income became much higher."
At the same time, bridges in the United States are collapsing, dozens of them, across the country, are threatened, and do not comply with modern safety standards. Bridges on both sides of the world. And the propaganda inside each one of them. This is the return of the series Between Two Worlds.
Guizhou is a Chinese province that has no plains. It is a group of mountains in southern China, which for millennia have been inhabited by many ethnic groups. Until the emperor sent his army and founded, 600 years ago, the city of Tianlong Tunpu. The all-stone structure was a kind of fortress to prevent invasions.
The older ladies serve tea to people while singing the old songs. It is one of the small towns high in the mountains that are now connected by the new bridge and within the digital world. Today the opera in the central square can be broadcast live, in HD quality.
This is the story China wants to tell. A tour organized by the company that installed 5G, the telephone company that operates the system and the local government. The three parties spent a year negotiating what could be shown.
The script is pre-written, a game of marked cards, a story that takes place in a village where the characters are put in their place to tell the story that the government wants. The group was largely made up of influencers who will show what is happening in China via social media.
Since November 2025, China has begun to control the presence of these opinion leaders within its own platforms. Everyone lined up to interview authorized people, and the translator had to be the one authorized by the delegation's organization.
"It is an effort to protect, control and contain China's image, something equivalent to censorship. In the Mao Zedong era, these guided tours were already carried out, and only carefully trained official translators were allowed to interact with visitors."
Professor Maria Repnikova, from Georgia State University, is one of the world's leading experts on Chinese political communication and says that this is a project aimed at both international tourists and Chinese visitors themselves.
"It's a very important part of domestic propaganda: inspiring pride and confidence in the direction China is taking. That means questioning less, having less doubt and criticism."
It is possible to see the journalists, but the village is a ghost. Many people left to look for jobs elsewhere. And now the project is to bring everyone back.
The exodus from these rural areas is one of the most serious problems that China has developed in recent decades. This is also one of the most serious problems in the United States.
Cities in the interior of the USA were where families who worked in industry lived, mainly in the Rust Belt, as the area with a strong industrial presence is called. It was the American dream. Families were able to support their children, have a house, car and lasting employment. Until the factories started to close. There is a large part of Donald Trump's electorate, who promises to make America great again, bringing back the factories and the population of these cities.
Many people in the United States believe that the death of factories was because of China, which began to produce on a large scale, much cheaper. And American factories could no longer compete.
Most of the workers who made Chinese factories grow came from the province where the highest bridge in the world is today, but which is also the poorest place in China: Guizhou.
It all started when China built so-called special economic zones. At least 600,000 people left every year to work mainly in the textile industry. And, in the beginning, the average salary was 25 dollars a month. They had accommodation and dining facilities. So they basically sent all of this money back home. That's when China began to emerge from extreme poverty.
The Chinese exodus has resulted in nearly 90 million children being left behind by their parents. Many of them are raised by their grandparents. This is not uncommon in Brazil either. Millions of people who were born in the Northeast went mainly to the Southeast and many left their children to be raised by their grandparents.
But in China there is a big difference: the word "hukou". For us to understand, it would be more or less like this: if you were born, for example, in Maranhão, your record would be there. And, if you were to work in São Paulo, you would have to return to Maranhão to use the healthcare system, apply for retirement or enroll your children in school. For decades, Guizhou families simply couldn't take their children because they couldn't study in schools near the factories.
"Today China has around 180 million rural migrant workers. By not giving them access to urban benefits, including the right for their children to study in city schools, a huge army of cheap labor is created. This cheap labor has been extremely important for the Chinese economic model over the last four or five decades," says Kam Wing Chan, professor at the University of Washington.
In recent years, the system has become more flexible. Some schools accept migrant children. But they still cannot take the entrance exam except in the place where they were born. The number of children left behind causes some of the country's greatest tragedies, which are very poorly documented.
"Today there is much greater monitoring of these children who live without their parents. They receive more support from the police and the Ministry of Education. And they are monitored by cell phone. It seems that these measures have helped to reduce the problem", says Kam Wing Chan, professor at the University of Washington.
At the food stand, the intention is to publicize how they are now selling their agricultural products over the internet throughout the country. But the boy says that, in fact, he doesn't live there. The company that hired him provides dormitory and meals. "I go home once a week. I live about two hundred kilometers away." It's all part of a project that China has not completed, but sells as accomplished.
While in the United States, 68 bridges in 19 states need immediate maintenance or are at risk of collapsing. This is according to the American government itself. American bridges are old not only because they cost much more, but because the American system is stuck.
"A construction company comes, without even designing the bridge, and says: 'You pay us three billion dollars and we will build the bridge'. Then this company will hire a designer, then a reviewer who will charge the same or more. There is the supplier who receives, the contractor who receives, and each one has their own profit margin. In the end, the cost will be double or triple", says Anil K. Agrawal, professor at the City College of New York (CUNY).
A major engineering project in New York State isn't that tall, but it's twice as long. It took five years to complete and cost US$4 billion. While the tallest bridge in the world took three years of planning and just 73 days to assemble. And it cost thirteen times less. Today China's poorest province has 50 of the world's 100 tallest bridges.
The province is in debt. Public servants' salaries are delayed. The cuts to health and education were felt by the entire population. But there is a project. Bring rejuvenation to rural areas. Reduce poverty and create a plan to improve people's lives.
While the United States faces a crisis of hope in rural areas, China delivers hope on a platter. Not that there is no advertising in the United States. The White House sells that the country is experiencing the greatest reindustrialization in history. But independent surveys show that factories continue to lay off people.
The difference in the United States is that there is a press talking about this. And the people can complain, too. In China, they open their eyes to filming or photographing what is permitted. The secret to trusting and always having faith that the future has already arrived. Or at least within reach.
In the next episode: The bridge is between two poles of innovation and entrepreneurship. The American Silicon Valley and the Chinese Silicon Valley. It's the technology race between two worlds.
The Isso É Fantástico podcast is available on g1 and the main podcast apps, bringing great reports, investigations and fascinating podcast stories with the Fantástico journalism seal: depth, context and information. Follow, like or subscribe to Isso É Fantástico on your favorite podcast player. Every Sunday there's a new episode.
