China on Friday finished the construction of the main structure of a bridge in its southwestern Guizhou Province, which is set to become the world's tallest bridge.
The last steel girder weighing about 215 tonnes was precisely hoisted into place on Friday afternoon, connecting sections of the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge currently under construction.
A project of Guizhou Transportation Investment Group Co., Ltd., the suspension bridge has a vertical height of 625 meters from the bridge deck down to the river surface -- roughly twice the height of the Eiffel Tower.
The 2,890-meter bridge, with a span of 1,420 meters, is also the world's largest span bridge to be built in a mountainous area.
Construction of the bridge began in 2022 and is scheduled to open to traffic in 2025.
China completes main structure of world's tallest bridge
China's Central Archives on Saturday released a batch of newly declassified Soviet documents related to Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II, adding new and compelling evidence to the historical record of Japan's notorious germ warfare crimes.
The archive copies, which China received from Russia, include trial records of Unit 731 members, investigation reports on the unit's crimes, and internal official correspondence of Soviet authorities, covering the period running from May 11, 1939 to Dec. 25, 1950.
During World War II, the Japanese invading forces established a biological warfare network across multiple Asian countries, with Unit 731 located in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, serving as a top-secret base for biological weapons and human experiments.
At least 3,000 people from China, the Soviet Union and other countries and regions were used in human experiments conducted by Unit 731.
"This year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. At this significant moment, the Central Archives of China has released the declassified Soviet interrogation files of Unit 731, which were transferred to China by Russia," said Zhao Cong, director of the Department of International Exchange and Cooperation of the Central Archives.
According to China's Central Archives, the archives provided by Russia reveal the Soviet investigation process during the early stage of the Khabarovsk War Crimes Trials in 1949, identifying more than 200 individuals linked to the crimes of Unit 731, and ultimately singling out 12 war criminals for public trials.
These individuals confessed to violating international conventions and to preparing and carrying out biological warfare.
According to Zhao, the newly released archives form a clear and comprehensive chain of evidence that lays out the full organizational structure of Unit 731, its capacity to research, develop, and produce biological weapons, and its horrific crimes, including human experiments.
"The archives provided by Russia, together with the preserved Unit 731 sites and existing evidence in China, reinforce and corroborate one another, further confirming the crimes committed by the Japanese militarists during their war of aggression against China. The materials include interrogations of Unit 731 personnel, interrogation notes, and personal testimonies," she noted.
Experts believe that these archives provide concrete historical evidence of Japan's biological warfare crimes in China, further confirming that Japan's biological warfare was a top-down, state-organized war crime and offering irrefutable proof for restoring historical truth.
China releases historical evidence from Russia on notorious Japanese Unit 731
