(Unofficial translation provided by BHRC)

“Shocking Inside Story of the Yellow River Grand Bridge Collapse: How Did Substandard Bolts Find Their Way into a National-Level Project and Lead to a Tragedy That Claimed 16 Lives?”, Caixin, April 13, 2026

The investigation report on the major collapse of the Jianzha Yellow River Super Bridge on the Xining-Chengdu Railway on August 22 was recently released. The accident resulted in 13 deaths and 3 people missing (……).

At around 3:00 a.m. on August 22, 2025, a sudden collapse occurred at the construction site of the Jianzha Yellow River Special Bridge, which was being built by China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd. 7 (MBEC 7). [...] This caused the collapse of the main arch ribs of the 108-meter steel girder. At the time of the incident, 15 construction workers and 1 on-site project manager were working at the site.

The investigation team found that the direct cause of the sudden collapse of the steel truss arch was: (……) the use of substandard bolts at the joints, whose load-bearing capacity was approximately 41% lower than the national standard, significantly reducing the load-bearing capacity of the distribution beam joints.

(……) The on-site supervisor hastily recruited workers from online platforms and his hometown to form a labor crew. These workers had never processed distribution beams—a critical load-bearing component—and were unaware of their purpose or the methods for inspecting welds, believing that a visual inspection was sufficient (……). They fundamentally lacked the professional capability to process distribution beams.

The construction project department (...) failed to strengthen process control as required by regulations, allowing the subcontractor team to proceed with blind fabrication and using the finished products without inspection. This resulted in all finished distribution beam welds failing quality standards, and the bolt hole diameters and positions on the joint plates being inaccurate, severely failing to meet design requirements.

(...) To disguise the illegal subcontracting as “legitimate,” the construction project department even created dual contracts to pass inspections. To control machinery costs and facilitate management, the construction project department required labor subcontractors to bring large and medium-sized machinery onto the site for operations (……)

The investigation team concluded that China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd.‘s bolt quality management contained serious loopholes and that its procurement management was chaotic. Although the company has a system in place to strengthen cost control and quality management for auxiliary materials, in practice, the construction project department (……) privately procured bolts (……).