BEIJING — China has just been declared the world’s second-biggest economy, and now it has a monster traffic jam to match.
Triggered by road construction, the snarl began 10 days ago and was 60 miles long at one point. Reaching almost to the outskirts of Beijing, traffic still creeps along in fits and starts, and the crisis could last for another three weeks, authorities say.
It’s a metaphor for a nation that sometimes chokes on its own breakneck growth.
In the worst-hit stretches of the road, in northern China, drivers pass the time sitting in the shade of their immobilized trucks, playing cards, sleeping on the asphalt or bargaining with price-gouging food vendors. Many of the trucks that carry fruit and vegetables are unrefrigerated, and the cargoes are assumed to be rotting.
On Sunday, the eighth day of the near-standstill, trucks moved less than a mile on the worst section, said Zhang Minghai, a traffic director in Zhangjiakou, a city 90 miles northwest of Beijing. China Central Television reported Tuesday that some vehicles had been stuck for five days.
No portable toilets were set up along the highway, leaving only two apparent options: hike to a service area or into the fields.
There were no reports of violent road rage, and the main complaint heard from drivers was about villagers on bicycles making a killing selling boxed lunches, bottled water to drink and heated water for noodles.
